Orphée
Where: McPherson Playhouse
When: Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m.
Tickets: $65 to $85 at rmts.bc.ca or 250-386-6121 (Friday only: $125 for a limited number of tickets that include a gala reception).
Baroque opera isn’t something Vancouver Island-raised baritone Tyler Duncan actively sought out.
“It kind of found me,” he said.
He was invited to perform in an early-music concert almost 20 years ago in Vancouver and said it snowballed from there.
Duncan, who grew up in Port Alberni and Victoria, sings a variety of opera and made his Metropolitan Opera debut a few weeks ago as the Huntsman in Antonin Dvorák’s 1901 opera Rusalka.
But when he takes the stage of the McPherson Playhouse as part of the Boston Early Music Festival ensemble, it will be with a decidedly earlier sound.
The 33 musicians, actors and dancers in the ensemble will perform a double-bill of La descente d’Orphée aux Enfers and La Couronne de Fleurs, dating from 1685 and 1686. Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s works are presented as a play within a play, through a first-time co-presentation by the Early Music Society of the Islands and Pacific Opera Victoria.
La Couronne de Fleurs, based on text by Molière, centres on a contest of arias in tribute to King Louis XIV. The shorter Orphée opera is one of the contest entries, telling the story of Orphée’s descent into the underworld to rescue his beloved Euridice.
Duncan, 38, said there’s nothing fundamentally different about singing early-music, it’s more about finding the right style.
“It’s not necessarily just singing … I can’t really say ‘balls to the wall’ in the paper, can I?” he said, before changing paths. “It’s not really about singing a grand Wagnerian opera, where you have to produce immense amounts of sound the entire song.
“In baroque music, you can actually pump it out and sing quite loudly, but most of it is about blending with the other singers and musicians on stage.”
That’s the case with Charpentier’s pieces, he said. Duncan performs the roles of Pan and Apollo, and, like every soloist, also sings in the chorus.
“The concept of the piece is really quite amazing, where all of the musicians and the singers are on stage together and interact with each other,” he said.
Duncan was born in Prince George and spent most of his time growing up in Port Alberni before moving to Victoria, where his parents ran Rodan Jewellers in the Eaton Centre, now the Bay Centre.
Asked if Vancouver Island had any effect on his pursuit of a music career, he responded: “I would say it’s the reason I’m doing it today.”
Both his Port Alberni school and Oak Bay High School had strong arts programs, he said. As a result, many of his classmates now have careers in the arts.
He named four music teachers — Pat and Barry Miller, Colin Campbell and Ileen Cooper — as his most influential. Campbell, for example, taught his band classes to focus on sound.
“He would say he would get goosebumps on his arms if the chords were perfectly in tune, so it really developed my ear.”
Duncan lives in upstate New York with his wife, Erika Switzer, a pianist he met at the University of British Columbia, and their six-week-old son, Ellis, who is on tour with them.
The Boston Early Music Festival comprises performers from all over North America with expertise in historic sounds, Duncan said.
“The sound that they create is probably something that people in Victoria haven’t heard and its quite mesmerizing,” he said.
Pacific Opera Victoria executive director Patrick Corrigan described the co-presentation with the Early Music Society of the Islandsas an opportunity to share audiences, as well as present early operas that might not have the blockbuster appeal to fill the Royal Theatre.
Pacific Opera Victoria has also partnered with the Belfry Theatre, the Victoria Children’s Choir and others with similar goals.
“This was just the perfect opportunity to work with an organization that’s very different than us to present one of North America’s most celebrated ensembles,” Corrigan said.