From lover to prisoner, tenor Douglas Kelly has startling range

During high school in Brisbane, award-winning tenor Douglas Kelly fronted a rock band, writing his own songs. And he hated classical music.

“I didn’t like the sound of it,” he says. “But I always loved performing from a young age, it’s my mode of self-expression. It’s where I feel most myself, and where I’m most able to access my creative side. I sound really prosaic, but that’s just what it is,” he says.

It wasn’t until year 12, when he sang Schubert’s ‘Schwanengesang’ for a music competition, that he fell in love with opera.

“It was also way better than anything I was writing,” he says. “From there, it opened the floodgates and I became obsessed. I completely fell in love with it – almost too much.”

The experience illuminated his path towards a career in opera, where Doug has excelled. Last year, he worked with Victorian Opera full-time as one of our 2024 Opera Prize winners, starring in Puccini’s La Rondine (The Swallow) and winning a Green Room Award for his critically acclaimed performance.

But as many artists can attest, success was certainly not linear. Doug suffered a “technical breakdown” in his fourth year of studying music at the Queensland Conservatorium. He says a combination of stress and poor technique led to him seizing a muscle.

Over the past seven years, he has built himself back up and rediscovered the expansive power of his voice. This includes stints in Tuscany, Italy studying under Paolo Pecchioli.

“It was a steady crawl back to finding my technique, all the while trying to maintain my love for singing. It often happens to singers, but no one ever talks about it,” he explains.

“It gave me so much perspective on singing. I suppose it’s now a cliché, but singing has to be what you do, not who you are.”

Now, Doug sings for a living. Like most professional performers, however, he still works the occasional side gig – but to an entirely different audience.

Doug works with recruiters to test prospective prison officers before they’re hired. In a role-play stage of the officers’ interview process, Doug plays the part of a prisoner to rile them up and push their limits.

“We put them through a process where I act as the prisoner and berate them. They fail or pass based on our interaction with them and the cues they need to hit.”

Doug returns to stage with Victorian Opera for Mozart’s Abduction (The Abduction from the Seraglio) at the Palais Theatre next month, where he’ll play the bumbling but well-meaning Pedrillo.

Then, his recital in Ballarat, A Poet’s Guide to Love and Loss, will be an altogether more intimate affair.

To help raise crucial funds for the Ballarat Arts Foundation, Doug will fill the Ballarat Mechanics’ Institute with the breathtaking music of Schumann, Barber and Butterworth, with pianist Tom Griffiths. The piece he is most looking forward to performing is Schumann’s ‘Dichterliebe’.

“It’s the first time I’ll be performing the piece with Tom, and it’s fun to see how another artist reacts to the piece.”

Anthea Batsakis, Content Editor