“He didn’t like the roundness of my voice, like a cave – he said you should sing clear. But at the Curtis, I’d been told to be round.” More imitations, with the mouth changing shape as the sound loses its dome-like resonance, and acquires an open clarity. ‘If I’d stayed singing round, I would not be doing what I am now. I’d be more like Pavarotti – with a lyric voice, right for Boheme and Lucia But I am different.

When I started singing classical, it stayed that way – sort of crossover, heavily miked, like Elvis Presley.” He got rid of that sound and hawked himself round blue-chip American institutions the Juilliard, the Manhattan School and the Curtis Institute. “And that was when I realised I had talent,” he says, “because they wanted me as a student. This was a case study in the still-developing business of the professional club game Bedford have history and support in a good rugby town. He began performing with his father in a piano bar in Lima and then put his own band together.

“It wasn’t very good,” he admits, “but I started organising concerts and sold tickets to my friends. At that time, I wanted to be too many things – an arranger; a pianist; to lead a rock band as a pop soloist – but when I went to the Conservatory, everything came clear and I started to take voice lessons.”His first mentor described him as a little bear with a harsh voice. “It was a very nasal sound,” says Florez, doing a quick imitation, “because that suited my style with the band. “Their music was just nice to sing and play.” Florez also loved what had been happening in Britain and America – The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, AC/DC and Led Zeppelin – and at 12 was writing his own songs. On the other hand, when I sing an opera with a low tessitura [pitch-range], that’s when I get tired.”As his onstage persona would lead you to expect, Florez has an easy grace of manner and he seems to regard the breaks which have propelled him famewards as his rightful due. “He has a beautiful legato and extraordinary high notes,” he replies, then adds: “But he must not overdo it, as that could damage his voice.” What is Florez’s comment on that? “A nice piece of paternal advice. “Not knowing some things makes you more relaxed.”Indeed, opera was far from his mind when he made his first steps as a musician.

Born in 1973, Florez grew up listening to and strumming along with his folk-singer father Ruben – whose light tenor and unaffected charm he’s inherited – and also listening to those great exponents of Cuban nueva trova, Silvio Rodriguez and Pablo Milan? “I wasn’t interested in their revolutionary words,” Florez says. “Coming from another world, as I did – not as a real student of opera – I didn’t know how important it all was,” he says afterwards. The next break came when Ricardo Muti invited him to sing in the second cast of Rossini’s Armida in Milan, and then – on the strength of his rehearsals – put Florez on for the opening night. So great was his success that contracts “practically rained” on him – and that rain has not abated. The first of those came in 1996 at the Rossini festival in Pesaro, where the leading tenor, Bruce Ford, fell ill and Florez was begged to step in.