The son of two musicians, Margison studied piano with his mother first, then tried himself as a singer-songwriter, before taking voice
lessons at the conservatory in his native Victoria from 1976; the same year, he already won the regional Met Auditions.
He made his first steps on the operatic stage at the Bastion Theatre in Victoria. From 1979 to 1982, he toured with Canada Opera Piccola,
an enterprise of Pierrette Alarie and Léopold Simoneau, from whom Margison
received further training. From 1980 to 1983, he also sang with the Pacific Opera in Victoria.
He spent the next years singing in all possible venues around Canada: Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Montréal, Winnipeg, Toronto, and
above all in Vancouver. In 1989, he was abroad for the first time, at the English National Opera as Riccardo. In 1991, he arrived in
Santiago de Chile and Houston, and then his career took off: San Francisco, Antwerp, Brussels, Melbourne, Covent Garden, Vienna Staatsoper,
Washington, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Hamburg, Helsinki, Metropolitan Opera New York (debut in 1995 as Pinkerton), Munich, Gent, Liège,
Dallas, Chicago, San Diego, Amsterdam, Sydney, Madrid; to most of these places, he returned multiple times.
From 2007, he worked as a vocal coach.
Reference 1: Kutsch & Riemens; reference 2
