Born in Paita in 1927, Alva studied at Peru’s Navy Academy before training as a singer, initially in Lima (where he made his debut aged 22 in Torroba’s zarzuela Luisa Fernanda) and subsequently in Milan, singing his first Count Almaviva in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia at La Scala in 1956 opposite Maria Callas’s Rosina.
Alva’s elegant, easy stage presence, natural sense of comic timing and small but perfectly formed voice (combining lightly-sprung agility with a distinctive sweetness of tone) proved eminently suited to the role, and he quickly found himself in great international demand for Rossini and light lyric assignments such as Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore (which he sang for his Glyndebourne Festival debut), Mozart’s Don Ottavio and Ferrando, and Fenton in Verdi’s Falstaff.
It was in the latter role that he made his first appearance at the Metropolitan Opera in 1964, with Leonard Bernstein (also making his house debut) conducting and Franco Zeffirelli as director: reviewing the performance, The New York Times noted that Alva ‘acted well, sang with style and proved a real asset to the production’. Alva returned to the Met more than a hundred times over the course of the next decade, singing roles including Ernesto in Don Pasquale, Tamino in Die Zauberflöte, many more Fentons and Almavivas, and Alfredo in La traviata – one of his few excursions into fuller lyric territory. His repertoire also included Handel’s Serse (in an era where castrato roles were often assigned to light tenors), Scarlatti’s La Griselda, relative rarities by Haydn, and cameo roles in verismo such as the Ballad-Seller in Puccini’s Il tabarro and Beppe in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci.
Alva’s neat, agile tenor and crystal-clear diction came across beautifully in the studio, and he recorded virtually all of his major opera roles in the most illustrious company: his discography includes three recordings of Barbiere (with Callas, Teresa Berganza and Victoria de los Ángeles as his Rosinas), Don Ottavio on Carlo Maria Giulini’s celebrated Don Giovanni (with Joan Sutherland as Donna Anna and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf as Donna Elvira), and a live recording of L’elisir d’amore from the 1962 Glyndebourne Festival (with Mirella Freni as Adina).
Alva retired from the stage in 1989, devoting much of his energy to working with young singers through masterclasses, competitions and his teaching practice at the Scuola di Canto in Milan; he was particularly committed to supporting emerging artists from Peru, including the Lima-born tenor Juan Diego Flórez who went on to build a stellar career in many of the roles which Alva had made his own during the 60s and 70s.
Alva’s artistry was acknowledged by an award from the Peruvian Ministry of Culture in 2012 and (perhaps more unexpectedly) by the Peruvian postal service, who issued a stamp in his honour in 2005. He died on 15th May and is survived by his wife Anita Zanetti and their two sons.