Opera new productions/new roles: Richard Margison sings Otello in the Opera Australia production

• Published in: Opera Canada Vol. 44; no. 2; pp. 10 - 11
• Main Author: Gooding, Wayne
• Format: Journal Article Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: Toronto Opera Canada Publications 01.07.2003
• Subjects: Achievements and awards; Biography; Margison, Richard; Opera singers; Personal profiles; Canada; United States
• ISSN: 0030-3577; 0030-3577

This May, at the Windsor Arms Hotel in Toronto, the Royal Conservatory of Music awarded Honorary Fellowships to two singers who are poles apart on the musical spectrum. One was the singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn, the other was tenor [Richard Margison]. Both performed after the awards ceremony. Margison chose "Nessun Dorma" from Puccini's Turandot and "O Souverain" from Massenet's Le Cid. Much to the delight of the audience, he also joined Cockburn to sing his song, "Lovers in a Dangerous Time." Perhaps most remarkable, though, is that over the next 12 months, he will also add four major new roles to his already deep repertoire. This May, he sang his first staged Florestan in Beethoven's Fidelio for Seattle Opera (he had already performed it in concert in Vancouver). Then, after an engagement in San Francisco singing Manrico in Verdi's Il Trovatore (at this point, one of Margison's signature roles), he heads to Sydney, Australia, to make his debut in the title role of Verdi's Otello for Opera Australia in August. Towards the end of this year, in one of his Met engagements, he takes on the role of the Kaiser in [Strauss]'s Die Frau ohne Schatten. And, in March 2004, he makes his debut in the title role of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes at La Monnaie in Brussels. That's an ambitious and challenging schedule by any standards, though Margison is characteristically matter-of-fact when he talks about it. "It wasn't by choice that all these new roles came so close together," he tells me after arriving in San Francisco for rehearsals mere days after the acclaimed performances of Fidelio for Seattle. "They just happened to come along at the same time." Margison makes his debut in a new production conducted by Simone Young and directed by the brilliant (if eclectic) Harry Kupfer (Russian soprano Elena Prokina sings Desdemona, with Australian baritone Jonathan Summers as Iago). He's been approached to sing Otello a number of times before, and had in fact planned to sing it in Brussels a year ago, until a case of bronchitis caused him to abandon the project. But now, he says, the time is right. "I feel that my voice has the right color and that I know what I'm doing technically. I didn't want to fall into the trap of taking the role on too quickly, and having to push my voice too hard to sing it. There's no question, Otello is a great role, but it's a punishing one."