Nigel Douglas

Nigel Douglas (born Nigel Douglas Leigh Pemberton; 9 May 1929 – 15 December 2022) was an English operatic tenor. His career began in Vienna and other German-speaking centres before he returned to Britain in the early 1970s, when he also directed operettas and broadcast about opera. Grove noted in the 1990s that the "dryness of his voice is offset by superb diction and the excellence of his acting". . He adopted his first two Christian names alone as his stage name when he began singing professionally outside the UK, as these were easier to pronounce for non-English people, and continued to use them thereafter.

Douglas took Classics at Magdalen College, Oxford, and, initially as a baritone, sang as often as possible in amateur productions. He then spent 18 months working at Lloyds Insurance before he undertook singing lessons with Alfred Piccaver, who was living in London at the time. A casual remark to a friend about dissatisfaction with his work and that he had to quit his job and study singing, led him to learn that Piccaver, who had been a star tenor at the Vienna State Opera from 1910 until just before the Anschluss was living in Putney. After six months of study, Piccaver was invited back to Vienna for the re-opening of the Vienna State Opera in 1955, but wanted to continue teaching Douglas.

Douglas made his professional debut at the Kammeroper in 1959 as Rodolfo, and went on to sing at the Volksoper. His first professional contracts were in Biel/Solothurn where he sang the tenor leads in Madama Butterfly, La Traviata, Don Giovanni, Barbiere, Undine and Nabucco, as well as Rosillon in The Merry Widow, then went to Coblenz in Germany where he added six more leading roles. In his next contract, in Basel, the director Dr Friedrich Schramm offered as his first two roles the Drum-Major in Wozzeck and Danilo in The Merry Widow, which set the scene for much of Douglas's career: modern or contemporary opera, and operetta. In 1965 Douglas's Barinkay in London Sadler's Wells was noted – "a pleasure to see a singer who knows how to put over a number with personality and panache. His basically rather dry voice hardens under pressure, but his softer, lyrical singing is well turned". Douglas played "a handsome Lorenzo" in the Italian version of Fra Diavolo at the farewell season for Tom Walsh at Wexford in 1966. In 1967 he appeared alongside Adele Leigh in a BBC television broadcast of The Count of Luxembourg produced by Cedric Messina, conducted by David Lloyd-Jones.

Although later in life he named his favourite roles as Rodolfo and Lionel, he stated that his great passion was Britten operas: "The greatest excitement in my career was working with Benjamin Britten". The role also brought him his only appearance at the Henry Wood Proms, in 1979.

Douglas also sang for the UK opera companies roles such as Ralph Rackstraw in H.M.S. Pinafore, where he "caught just the right degree of self-parody", an old man in Guntram conducted by John Pritchard, Loge in Welsh National Opera's Göran Järvefelt Ring Cycle in 1983, Shapkin in From the House of the Dead, and the Devil in Rimsky Korsakov's Christmas Eve at English National Opera in 1988. The latter roles represented what one reviewer described as his "gallery of dotty eccentrics",

Other roles creations during his career included Jack Worthing in Bunbury by Paul Burkhard (Basel, 1964),

He translated The Count of Luxembourg and Countess Maritza for New Sadler's Wells Opera in 1983.

His recordings include Owen Wingrave (1970, Decca), The Gypsy Baron (1965, His Master's Voice), Salome (1961, Decca), and an operetta recital with Adele Leigh, and the orchestra of the Vienna Volksoper conducted by Rudolf Bibl (1960, Philips).

Douglas died on 15 December 2022, aged 93.