WITH a rock-to-opera career behind him, superstar Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez is coming to Australia for the first time on a three-stop tour — and one of those stops will be Canberra’s Llewellyn Hall.

Flórez’s wife and the mother of his two children, Julia Trappe, is Australian, so this visit is special to him.

During his rock-to-opera career, he performed at every major international opera house, with popular album releases and many distinctions, including Peru’s highest honour the Gran Cruz de la Orden El Sol, as well as having been recognised as a Kammersänger by the Austrian government in 2012.

At age 31, Flórez also appeared on the 2-sol stamp, part of a series of five stamps honouring contemporary Peruvian musicians.

In 2011, he founded Sinfonía por el Perú, an inclusive social project that operates orchestras and choirs throughout Peru to help vulnerable children and adolescents through music, for which  he was named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and received the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award.

As a boy in Peru, Flórez sang “anything from ‘huaynos’ [popular Andean music and dance] to Elvis Presley” in a pub where his mother worked in the Barranco district of Lima.

Juan Diego Flórez, Llewellyn Hall, November 7.