Opinion | Enterprising Pacific Opera owes much credit to artistic director Timothy Vernon

VICTORIA, B.C. — That little bit of England known as Victoria, B.C. has many reasons to recommend it, from afternoon tea at the Empress Hotel to Canada’s oldest Chinatown.

But who would have expected to find, among its cultural artifacts, arguably the country’s most enterprising mainstream opera company?

Of course there are bigger companies in bigger cities, although you might not guess it this season, when Pacific Opera is offering the same number of mainstage productions as Toronto’s Canadian Opera Company.

The essential difference is one man, who began his musical career as a six-year-old choirboy in Victoria’s Christ Church (Anglican) Cathedral.

Over lunch the other day at the Union Club — another of Victoria’s commendable features — I bluntly accused Timothy Vernon of having essentially gone nowhere.

It was admittedly a joke. He has certainly gone elsewhere, including 11 years spent in Vienna, where he studied conducting with the legendary Hans Swarowsky. He has gone to much of Canada, including stints as conductor of the Regina Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra London and the McGill University Orchestra with whom he filmed a performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, impressive by just about any standard.

So why is he back home on the wave-swept shores of Vancouver Island, working only a few blocks away from his place of employment as a six-year-old?

I mentioned the reason already: Pacific Opera. He became its founding artistic director in 1979 and has remained its artistic director ever since. Now that is surely what can be called commitment.

It is virtually unheard of for the head of an opera company to sit behind the same desk for more than 40 years. Mind you, some of that time has been spent in the pit of the Royal Theatre.

It is not a very good pit. Vernon describes it as a depressed area in front of the stage. And the Royal Theatre is not much of an opera house, a 1920s vaudeville and silent movie palace pretending grandeur.

And yet, the Royal has played host to more than 120 Pacific Opera productions, including the Canadian stage premieres of Strauss’s Dafne and Capriccio, Montemezzi’s The Love of Three Kings, Weber’s Der Freischutz and Hoiby’s The Tempest.

Yes, it has also produced staples from the standard repertoire, but after a few years, when members of his board spoke in favour of a more conservative approach, Vernon told them “if all you want is to do the Barber (of Seville), you don’t need me. If you want me to stay, we are going to have to go beyond the Top 10.”

Well, they did. And he stayed.

Moreover, he made Pacific Opera a launching pad for Canadian singers, using non-Canadians only when a suitable native singer was unavailable.

The production I attended recently of Mozart’s Don Giovanni illustrated his point, with a Maple Leaf roster headed by the talented baritone Daniel Okulich in the title role.

The Royal Theatre may be no one’s idea of an acoustical ideal, but its relative intimacy frees young singers of the temptation to force their voices. And although Vernon describes the recent Don Giovanni as non-traditional, moving the costuming forward a couple of centuries scarcely compares with the craziness sometimes encountered these days on the stages of Europe. The audience was actually able to follow the story.

Ah, the audience. That is one of Pacific Opera’s assets. The public has come to trust what the company brings to the stage. Les Feluettes? When I expressed surprise that Pacific Opera had co-produced, with Opera de Montreal, the premiere of an opera based on the homosexual love of two students in a Quebec college, Vernon calmly replied, “it sold out.”

Vernon conducted that premiere in both cities. He has conducted operas and symphony orchestras in just about every major Canadian city, in a repertoire including the likes of Berg’s Wozzeck and the Pacific Opera-commissioned Mary’s Wedding, along with most of his company’s other productions.

Next season he will even conduct a German opera almost no one has heard of, Walter Braunfels’ setting of Aristophanes’ comedy The Birds, banned by the Nazis as degenerate music.

A large fish in a small pond? Perhaps, but artistic satisfaction is where you find it. Emily Carr found it in Victoria, and her paintings, housed in the local art gallery, are one reason to visit. Pacific Opera is another.