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Tenor makes a natural Otello

What: Otello Where: Royal Theatre When: Oct. 15, 17 and 23 at 8 p.m., Oct. 21 at 7 p.m.,Oct. 25 at 2:30 p.m.
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Pacific Opera Victoria artistic director Timothy Vernon, left, and tenor Kristian Benedikt.

What: Otello
Where: Royal Theatre
When: Oct. 15, 17 and 23 at 8 p.m., Oct. 21 at 7 p.m.,Oct. 25 at 2:30 p.m.
Tickets: $25 to $135 (250-386-6121 or Royal/McPherson box offices) student rush tickets $15, available 60 minutes before showtime

The role of Otello is famously difficult. When Placido Domingo sang Otello for the first time at the New York-based Metropolitan Opera in 1979, opera lovers fretted. Would Domingo, then just 38, be able to carry such a dramatic, heavy role? Would the young singer (God forbid) strain or even permanently damage his voice?

The worrying was all for naught. Domingo sang magnificently; the critics raved.

Pacific Opera Victoria has lined up its own ringer for the role of Otello, the Moorish general deceived by duplicitous Iago. Lithuanian tenor Kristian Benedikt is an Otello specialist, having performed it 80 times. He has sung it throughout Italy: Modena, Piacenza, Cagliari and Palermo. He has sung it in Munich, St. Petersburg, Santiago and Stockholm.

What’s more, the boyish-looking 40-year-old has been singing the role — requiring maturity and dramatic heft — since his mid-30s.

“That’s amazing, having learned that much at that age. Many people start Otello at 40,” said POV artistic director Timothy Vernon, who conducts the Victoria production.

The opera, opening tonight at the Royal Theatre, is a co-production with Opera de Montreal, which stages it next year. The Montreal team originally tipped Vernon to the talents of Benedikt, who, as Otello, is praised for his acting abilities as well as his dark-timbred dramatic tenor. The problem for any company is finding a suitable Otello for Verdi’s celebrated 1887 opera.

As Vernon said: “There aren’t many people in any generation who can really sing Otello, the role is so extremely demanding.”

It’s not just a matter of finding a superb singer who can also, as a strong actor, navigate the tortured journey Otello takes.

These days, there’s also the question of makeup and colour-blind casting.

Last August, the Metropolitan Opera made national headlines when it announced Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko would not wear traditional blackface-style makeup. The Met noted: “Otello is a Moor from North Africa.” However, the company also acknowledged making up a white performer to resemble a dark-skinned character is a “sensitive issue.”

It was the first time the Met has staged Otello without dark makeup since it first produced the opera in 1891. Today, blackface in live performance is less and less accepted.

As for Pacific Opera’s production, well ... it’s a compromise solution.

“He’s tanned,” said Glynis Leyshon, the stage director. “That’s the look we’ve gone for.”

It’s a deliberate choice. Leyshon said these days, the “Olivier tradition” of using black makeup is inappropriate. Opera productions opting for blackface Otellos are “insensitive to what’s going on.”

The director said it’s impossible to ignore the fact POV’s production takes place in 2015.

The question of race, prejudice and identity burns as brightly as ever. (Remember the uproar kindled after American civil rights activist Rachel Dolezal was revealed to be not quite the African-American she professed to be.)

Some opera professionals insist that Otello ought to be sung by a black tenor, even though finding a suitable singer of any colour is difficult.

Leyshon said what’s most significant in theatrical terms is that Otello, as a Moor from North Africa, would be considered a foreigner by the Venetian army he leads. That sense of displacement, or “otherness,” in the character is more important than focusing on what colour face-paint the singer wears.

That said, she acknowledged the makeup issue did spark debate among POV’s creative team.

“There’s much discussion on this issue,” she said, “and some day it’ll be lovely when it isn’t the focus.”

Interviewed with Vernon, Benedikt — a bearded, spectacled man who speaks with a strong Lithuanian accent — seemed bemused by the issue.

“I am not black here,” he said. “I was black in Italy.”

Benedikt said his Otello makeup has taken various forms depending on the production. In one modern production, for instance, Otello’s race was suggested by a single black line daubed on his face.

Overall, the singer, who said he’s pleased with Leyshon’s approach, seemed unconcerned with the makeup discussion. He said: “It’s not about colour, it’s about what [Otello] is inside ... It doesn’t matter, you’re black, you’re yellow, you’re white.”

Vernon believes Otello’s skin colour is significant, however.

“It’s the decision of the director,” he said. “I have my own take on it. I’m waiting until the PC blows over and we can get back to his being a black man. That’s how Shakespeare thought of him.”

Otello co-stars American baritone Todd Thomas, who made his POV debut in 2014 with another ambitious undertaking: Wagner’s Das Rheingold. The role of Desdemona is sung by Canadian soprano Leslie Ann Bradley.

Leyshon said this is a faithful adaptation, featuring a traditional set of an imperial outpost with contemporary design elements (the original opera happens in 16th-century Cyprus). The set, by Peter Hartwell, is designed to expand for a larger venue — the 3,000-seat Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier hall — when the production moves to Montreal. The period-style costumes are on loan from Opera de Montreal.

Despite lively debate about Otello’s skin colour, the POV creative team appears to have retained a sense of humour on the topic.

As a reporter, trying to ascertain the character’s exact makeup shade, asked Benedikt: “Just so I’m clear, you will be suntanned?”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Benedikt.

“But not Venice Beach, California, suntanned?”

Vernon smiled.

“A Beach Boys Otello,” he replied.

achamberlain@timescolonist.com