“It’s all about who hears you,” says rising opera tenor Alex Boyer when asked about the challenges of advancing one’s career. “A lot of singers are out there are really really great and people just don’t know that they exist.”
Boyer, who has performed with the Festival Opera, Dallas Opera, Chicago Opera Theatre and more will give local audiences a chance to discover him when he joins The Verdi Chorus for their Sound & Fury concerts this weekend in Santa Monica. These concerts mark a return to the ensemble for Boyer as a guest soloist.
Last month I spoke to Boyer about his rising career, these two concerts and what he’d like to do in the future.
What was your familiarity with The Verdi Chorus prior to first joining as a soloist?
I didn’t have a whole lot of familiarity with them. Shana Blake Hill is a friend of mine and we’re on the same management roster. She put my name in the hat to sing with them.
What most interests you about The Verdi Chorus and the work they do?
It’s always a great thing to have people excited about opera, which I’ve chosen to make my career in. There are a lot of Verdi operas that aren’t performed. I know the Chorus doesn’t exclusively sing Verdi, but it’s nice to dabble in a few of these things.
Last year we did some numbers from Nabucco. I guess it is reasonably frequently performed, but not terribly frequently. It’s a piece I’m not very familiar with but there is a lot of great music in it and some of these pieces that people don’t get to hear and I don’t get to be involved with are performed. This year there will be some things from Otello, which is a popular Verdi piece, but not one I get to sing very much.
Your resume includes performances in Il Trovatore and Tosca. What are the challenges of getting fully invested in an aria for a concert without having the lead-up to those arias as they play out in an opera performance?
That’s my job. It’s something I can do. There is a fun difference between stage work and concert work. In a concert sometimes all of the things you might not do in a fully-staged version you are musically more open to doing because it is out of context. There are moments you can indulge a lot more which is a lot more fun for me and what an audience expects.
You’ve sung with multiple opera companies. What is the path for getting bigger roles with bigger companies?
You sing at one company and then someone asks who can do [a role you’ve just done.] Someone says “oh my friend did this at this company.” As you get yourself out there people begin to talk.
What are the roles you’d ideally like to do in the future?
I would love to do Andrea Chénier. Lohengrin is also amazing. I’m not quite sure. I’ve done a lot of stuff that’s been all over the map with my voice type and age. I lean away from stuff for older singers – work like Wagner. But I don’t think Lohengrin would be a problem.
One opera Boyer will soon be tackling is a little-known one-act opera by Erich Korngold called Der Ring Des Polykrates with Numi Opera. The two performances will take place at Zipper Hall at the Colburn School in December. When it gets closer to those performances, we will have another quick chat with Boyer about the opera and what he enjoys most about its music.
Photo of Alex Boyer courtesy of The Verdi Chorus