News

That, or book a ticket to New York, where the Peninsula-raised classical star made his debut with the Metropolitan Opera Thursday, in the role of Bacchus in Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos.

That’s where proud parents Gloria and Brian Clinker, and the Peninsula Arts Foundation’s Elvina Stewart and Gale Lindenthaler, will be for the premiere of the opera.

In the planning stages is a fundraising concert by Ryan during a three-week return home next Christmas, a benefit for the foundation – which gave Ryan invaluable assistance paying for studies in the early days of his singing career.

“He always wants to help them because they believed in him at the very beginning,” said Gloria Clinker, who has stepped down as a board member of the foundation after 15 years.

In the meantime, local fans of Ryan, hailed the ‘Heldentenor of the century’ in European opera circles, will still have a chance to hear him – if not see him.

Ariadne auf Naxos will be broadcast live from the Met on Feb. 20 at 1 p.m. on CBC 105.7’s Saturday Afternoon At The Opera.

“I just want to let people know that they can turn on the radio and hear him,” Clinker noted.

Another rare opportunity to see Ryan perform in the Lower Mainland area will also occur in December, when he will sing Mahler’s song-symphony Das Lied von der Erde at UBC.

Otherwise, the 38-year-old singer is “booked for the next 10 years,” Clinker said.

“Every opera house in Europe is wanting him.”

Ryan’s success has been clinched as a younger singer capable of specializing in the mature dramatic demands of the Wagner repertoire – such as Siegfried, a role tenors usually shy away from until they are 10 years older, by which time it’s harder to summon the necessary stamina.

Conductor Sir Simon Rattle has been quoted as saying “finally, a tenor who can sing Siegfried,” while Zubin Mehta has praised his musicianship while acting challenging roles, (“wherever he is on that stage, he’s with me all the time.”)

And the legendary Placido Domingo, who visited Ryan backstage after his debut in Siegfried in Valencia last year, complimented him on being unusually “strong and spry” right through to the end of the opera, Clinker said.

The December concerts in South Surrey and Vancouver will be all the more noteworthy because of their rarity, she added.

Not just Canadian opera houses, but major international venues in Los Angeles and Covent Garden in London have missed the boat on the singer by waiting too long to book him, she said.

“Covent Garden said ‘we’ll wait’ and now they’re sending telegrams asking if he’d please come over,” Clinker said.

“But as his manager, Marcus Carl, said, ‘this boy is not sitting home waiting for the phone to ring.’”