Diego

Teaches at Cricket eLearning, Formerly Fluent City

Diego is is a lifelong language learner – he was born in Venezuela but moved to the US at age 1, and was raised bilingual in English (by his parents) and Spanish (by his awesome nanny Marisa). In middle school he studied Japanese for three years, and also began studying French. At the same time, he was beginning to sing opera, and so was exposed to quite a lot of Italian through listening to hours of recordings. At NYU, he majored in Romance Languages, and spent semesters abroad in Paris and Florence, where he perfected his pronunciation and gained some serious operatic street cred. After finishing undergrad a semester early, Diego was a substitute teacher in his home town of Simsbury, CT, where he became a Zen master at intercepting paper airplanes, and amassed an impressive collection of confiscated Pokémon cards. Diego then decided to pursue music more seriously, and spent three years at Yale getting a Masters in Opera, while learning German on the side. At the same time, he taught voice lessons and oversaw the university’s for-credit voice lessons program with over 100 students. Diego’s performing career began with a 3-year stint at the Metropolitan Opera, after which he accepted a two-year contract at the Turin Royal Opera in Italy. He just recently returned to New York, and while his taste buds are still in withdrawal from the ambrosial delights of Italian cuisine, he is thrilled to be home, and excited to be sharing his language learning experience with pur students. Diego comes from a huge and boisterous family with over 40 first cousins on his father’s side alone, and was recently described by his 5-year-old cousin Erin as “the silliest grownup she knows”. Aside from his mad coloring skills, in his spare time, Diego is mildly obsessed with Harry Potter and with making electronic gadgets of all sorts do his bidding. In the fall of 2012, he will be starting law school at a (very fortunate) institution of higher learning to be determined!