For exactly half his life, Michael Koenig’s robust rich tenor filled some of the most famous concert halls in the world. But that ended suddenly for Michael, known to friends and family as Michl. The Covid epidemic changed everything.

Opera houses from Milan to Tokyo shut their doors, and Michl’s artistic life came to an abrupt end. He subsequently lost nearly three years of income, and at age 52 he faced a crushing dilemma: how to sustain a family, and a home on Sangan Drive near Masset.

He sank into depression: “I found myself sitting out there staring at the rain not knowing what to do. What’s going on? It really does mess with one’s brain. . . But I snapped out of that with the help of family and neighbours, and I re-invented myself.”

Re-invention came with a variety of jobs: manning a landing craft for Highlander Marine Services in Daajing Giids, helping with a towing service in Wáan Kún Port Clements, and even doing some search and rescue work.

“It was a huge transition,” he says. But the oddest job appealed to the second love of his life besides singing: cooking. Michl built himself a wood-burning pizza oven on an old boat trailer, and he made the switch from Puccini to pepperoni.

Every Friday, when he’s not doing his marine work, Michl mixes his pizza dough, fires up his oven, sets out his sign on Tow Hill Road and posts on his Facebook page. He sells a 12-inch pizza for $20. The most popular is an Alsatian pizza known as a tarte flambé—a yeast dough, sour cream, bacon bits, chives, basil, cracked pepper. “You need a flame constantly rolling around to make it crispy,” he says. The dough is brushed before and after the baking with garlic and olive oil “so it’s nice and shiny, and you get this smell of basil when you open the box, wow, that’s what I like!”

Michl’s eyes also light up when talking about another favorite—a Turkish pizza known as lahmacun featuring a paste of roasted peppers, tomatoes, parsley, garlic and red onions, topped with feta cheese, spiced ground meat and cucumbers. “Absolutely phenomenal,” he says.

When not rhapsodizing about his pizzas, Michl leads a structured rural life. Out of bed before sunrise, coffee, going online to read international newspapers, caring for six geese and 16 ducks, seeing to his new greenhouse, sometimes fishing for his family and walking his dog.

Michl still plans to sing occasionally from year to year but nowhere near his hectic pace of times past when he was on the road for six months of the year. He says the operatic life is not as professionally managed as it once was, and the constant travel was “stealing my lifetime, and that’s where I draw the line.”

He’s thinking of expanding his pizza business to two nights a week, and also hopes to cater home dinners on demand. Michl says he can put together a seven-course meal, with starters and dessert. His limit is 18 diners. “I can cook anything,” he says, with all the immodesty of a masterful chef.

But for the moment, his focus is on making the most adventuresome pizza on Haida Gwaii.

Michl can be reached at 250-626-7188 and on his Facebook page.