FRIENDS OF TIMOTHY
Where: McPherson Playhouse, 3 Centennial Sq.
When: Monday, May 15, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $25-$150 from the Royal McPherson box office (250-386-6121) or rmts.bc.ca
When founding artistic director Timothy Vernon leaves his post at Pacific Opera Victoria next month, he will do so with a résumé unlike many others in the city.
The Order of Canada, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal and the Lieutenant Governor’s Arts and Music Award are among the accolades he amassed during his 43 years and 120 performances with the company. Vernon will add to his accomplishments in the coming years as he plans to continue collaborating, conducting, and creating.
Vernon is being fêted with a large-scale celebration concert Monday at the McPherson Playhouse, directed by Glynis Leyshon, hosted by CBC Radio’s Marion Newman, and featuring B.C. Lt.-Gov. Janet Austin. More than 100 people are expected to participate, including conductors Giuseppe Pietraroia and Kimberley-Ann Bartczak, sopranos Lauren Margison and Suzanne Rigden, mezzo-soprano Allyson McHardy, tenor Colin Ainsworth, baritone Bruce Kelly, and members of the Pacific Opera Chorus and Victoria Symphony.
Vernon curated the concert, and has assembled a star-studded roll call of participants. This should not come as a surprise. His circle of friends stretches worldwide by this point, having been a guest conductor with symphonies in Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton, Montréal, Winnipeg, Toronto, Nova Scotia and Ottawa during his career.
Robert Holliston, head of keyboard at the Victoria Conservatory of Music, will speak at the event Monday. He’s known Vernon since 1974, and as the host of pre-performance lectures for the majority of POV events since 1993, has worked as closely with Vernon as anyone in the city (the friends worked together on several operas during the late 1970s, prior to Vancouver Island Opera morphing into Pacific Opera Victoria in 1980.)
Holliston said Vernon’s artistic vision is what makes him so unique. “He’s relentlessly inquisitive, and has a very deep knowledge and understanding of opera repertoire. But his great gift is vision. Although it does take a great skillset to maintain any opera company for this number of years, what singles Pacific Opera out from any similarly sized company in North America is the variety and breadth of repertoire.”
Vernon will remain involved with POV until the end of June, when his current five-year contract is officially up. That brings to a close one of the longest tenures in Canadian opera history. Vernon will continue to make his presence felt throughout the city, however. He programmed the next two seasons for POV, and has committed to serve as guest conductor of the Victoria Symphony for Die Walküre, which will open the company’s 2023-24 season.
“He has no intention of retiring,” Holliston said.
“I’ve got 10 years of energy and ideas and plans left,” Vernon said during an interview with the Times Colonist in August, when it was announced his contract was not being renewed.
He leaves POV in great standing, especially in Canada, where it is known for brave artistic endeavours.
“I used to go to all these conferences, and eventually someone would sidle up and say, ‘OK, how do you get away with all this in Victoria?’ ” Vernon said in August. “The focus on Canadian talent has grown incredibly in the last 20 years, and that is something to which I feel we have contributed by example.”
