Mary-Jean O’Doherty

The young Australian coloratura soprano, Mary-Jean O’Doherty, became the first winner of the Australian International Opera Award in 2008, an achievement which earned her a scholarship at the prestigious International Academy of Voice, at Cardiff University in Wales. In the autumn of 2010, she created the role of Naiad (Strauss, Ariadne auf Naxos) in the opera’s production by the Welsh National Opera, having simultaneously studied the part of Zerbinetta.

Mary-Jean O’Doherty was born in Houston, Texas. In 2005 she moved to Australia, the native country of her father and her grandparents. She currently holds Australian citizenship. She studied voice and flute at East Carolina University, where she appeared in the school’s opera productions, as Damon (Handel, Acis and Galatea, 2004), Donna Anna (Mozart, Don Giovanni, 2004), and Emmie (Britten, Albert Herring, 2003). In 2007 she reached the final of the Marianne Mathy Award of the Australian Singing Competition. In 2008 she sang the title part in Franz Suppé’s operetta Die schöne Galathée, at Sydney’s Pacific Opera, as well as appearing in the role of Young Heidi in a Melbourne staging of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Follies, and as Carolina in Cimarosa’s opera Il matrimonio segreto, in Barga, Italy. In February 2010 she was the Queen of the Night (Mozart, Die Zauberflöte), at the Opera Ddraig in Cardiff.