"expressive, informed, insouciant"

It’s easy to swoon over tenor Juan Diego Flórez’s high Cs, which he spun out Tuesday at the Eli and Edythe Broad Stage in Santa Monica with the prodigality of exuberant youth. But his artistry goes far deeper.

In fact, his most moving moments came not in the virtuoso challenges of Donizetti, Rossini or Massenet, but in the contained, inward pain of a man singing of leaving his country forever, in “Adiós Granada” from Tomás Barrera-Saavedra’s zarzuela, “Los emigrantes.”

The audience’s tumultuous reaction seemed to take the 36-year-old Peruvian by surprise. Indeed, from the very beginning, he appeared startled by the audience’s overwhelming embrace. But Los Angeles has been waiting for him for a long time.

His recordings for Decca whetted the appetite for a singer who negotiated the purling bel canto repertory with such expressive, informed, insouciant ease.