Every gilded cage needs someone to hold the keys. In the Canadian Opera Company’s new production of La Traviata, bass-baritone Nick Murphy, who sings the Marchese d’Obigny, sees that someone as himself.
And he is having the time of his life.
Giuseppe Verdi’s opera premiered at Venice’s La Fenice in 1853, with a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave drawn from Alexandre Dumas fils’ La Dame aux camélias. It follows Violetta Valéry, Paris’s most sought-after hostess, who risks a freer life with the ardent Alfredo Germont. It asks what a society that consumes her will demand in return. Why does Murphy see himself as a keyholder? He recalls revival director Mo Zhou speaking of Violetta living inside a gilded cage. The Marquis, he reasons, “ranks the highest in the peerage of French society. So he is the keeper of the keys to her cage, really.”
Arin Arbus’ sumptuous new staging of La Traviata, set in the 1850s demi-monde, is now on stage at the Four Seasons Centre, with Paolo Carignani conducting. Kathryn Lewek makes her COC debut as Violetta, sharing the role with Andriana Chuchman. Long Long and Luke Norvell alternate as Alfredo; and Russell Braun and Reginald Smith, Jr. alternate as his father, Giorgio Germont.
One of the youngest in the cast, Murphy plays the Marquis as hungry … for all of it. “Everything is his for the taking,” Murphy says of his character, “and that does include everyone as well. I don’t want him to be sitting back, taking it all in, and bored,” he remarks. “It’s ‘let them eat cake’ — and he’ll eat all the cake! The cake in this instance is, of course, gossip. He is an incorrigible gossip. He’s an incorrigible flirt. He’s there for a good time, and maybe a long time … who knows?” he laughs.
As he approached the role, Murphy was hungry for insight into the Marquis. The character’s name sent him to history, where he learned about the real Julie d’Aubigny, a 17th-century bisexual opera star and fencer who inspired “all of these wild crazy tales” — and is in his mind the Marquis’ ancestor. “La Traviata is a very sad opera,” Murphy grants, “but [cue wicked smile] there is so much fun to be had in it, as well!” The gaiety makes the sorrow land harder, and Verdi’s score greases the path: “Good opera writing is also like good stage direction.”
Murphy’s road to opera began in Prince Edward Island, where the culture of music and community is “truly in the soil of the island”. He was growing up performing musical theatre and dance, until his voice teachers took him aside after a show, and told him, “we would love to teach you how to sing.” After these lessons, he entered music school — but with a career in law in mind — and “got into opera by mistake. And every year since has been, well, let’s just keep going and see what happens.”
A Master’s degree at McGill University led to the COC’s Ensemble Studio apprentice program, where he is currently in his second year. “Forever, I will see my life as ‘before COC Ensemble’ and ‘after COC Ensemble,’” he laughs, before adding: “I’m incredibly grateful for my time here.”
A versatile singer and actor, comedy has so far been his calling card, in roles like Don Bartolo in The Barber of Seville and Don Magnifico in La Cenerentola and, next spring, a cover assignment as Dulcamara. “Back home, we call it the gift of the gab,” he smiles. When the patter flows, “you just get to sit back and turn your brain off and just let it run.” It sounds effortless but requires deliberate focus: “I think the key to good buffo is that they are not funny,” he explains. “You don’t want to play the comedy. You want to play the seriousness and absurdity of the situation.” Playing the Marquis asks for the same truthfulness in a more controlled register: he sees it as “two sides of the same coin.” And, he explains, La Traviata is an old friend: as an early student contract at Brott Opera, it “holds a very special place in my heart.”
Murphy is having a blast, but he’s not averse to looking ahead. His dream role is Wolfram in Wagner’s Tannhäuser — whom he calls a man of “such honesty.” His dream stage partner is Lisette Oropesa, whose art he characterizes in similar terms, as having “such honesty and clarity.”
Then, of course, there is the law. “Music is very much a puzzle… and I think the law is similarly a puzzle,” he notes. It’s also a performance, and “I always saw myself in litigation.” A birth-chart reader once told him that, as a Leo, his career was “either going to be music, or it was going to be law.” Might he perhaps do both, like an opera version of NHL Hall of Famer Ken Dryden? “If I’ve got a couple years to spare,” he grants, “I’d love to go back to law school.” Asked if he would return to musical theatre, he smiles that it remains “my first love,” and he keeps the key to that door handy, acknowledging with a grin, “that avenue is always open.”
Murphy takes the stage in the COC’s La Traviata at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, running until October 17, 2026. Tickets are available at coc.ca.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
