Katherine Doig - Creative Director

Soprano Katherine is the person responsible for the look and feel of Toi Toi Opera, overseeing the communication, marketing, and branding strategies, and managing, creating, and curating content for the company’s online and offline channels. She designed, built, and maintains the company’s website, and is the company’s social media and publicity manager. As Creative Director, she seeks to ensure that Toi Toi Opera’s ‘speaking voice’ and visual language are as shiny and as sparkly as the glorious singing voices of Waitaha Canterbury that the company was founded to promote and to celebrate.

Archivist by day and opera singer by night, Ōtautahi-born Katherine is co-founder, trustee and Creative Director of Toi Toi Opera, and National Archivist of Te Hāhi Weteriana o Aotearoa - The Methodist Church of New Zealand.

A soprano and pianist, Katherine graduated from the University of Canterbury with first class honours in music and in history. While at Canterbury, she was awarded both the Michael Toovey Memorial Prize for her outstanding academic and executant ability in music, and also the Joan Burns Memorial Scholarship, for the top postgraduate scholar in history. She holds performance diplomas in solo piano and in singing from Trinity College London, most recently being awarded her LTCL in singing with distinction in late 2023.

Katherine’s early love of music was fostered first by piano lessons with Carol Spain from the age of 5 years, and later with Wallace Woodley QSO throughout her high school years, and she obtained her Performer’s Certificate in solo piano from Trinity College London at the tender age of 16 under his expert guidance. The same year, like many Doigs before her, her flirtation with cricket ultimately ended in disaster, when a mistimed attempt at what would’ve been a spectacular catch on the boundary shattered her right hand, and with it, her (let’s be honest, quite improbable) dream of becoming the next Lang Lang. By the way, the ball went for 6.

This misfortune did however result in her turning her attention to vocal study. Her formative years of vocal training came under the expert tutelage of outstanding NZ soprano, the late Suzanne Prain, and in 2015 she went on to study with renowned NZ tenor and teacher Patrick Power ONZM in Adelaide, Australia. She currently studies singing under Margot Button in Christchurch, and continues to work with Patrick Power as her coach. Katherine has also been fortunate enough to receive regular operatic vocal coaching from Sharolyn Kimmorley AM.

Katherine first found her feet in opera as a member of the Canterbury Opera Youth Chorus while still at high school in Christchurch, and she went on to become a member of the Southern Opera Chorus, the Opera Club, and Te Kōrihi a NZ Opera (the New Zealand Opera Chorus) - of which she’s been a member for the past decade.

Katherine enjoys a busy performance schedule as a solo recitalist, soloist for choral repertoire, and appearing in principal and comprimario roles for Toi Toi Opera and New Zealand Opera’s Christchurch seasons. Her most recent mainstage opera performances were in the choruses of Southern Opera’s The Magic Flute, and New Zealand Opera’s Don Giovanni, La Bohème, Madama Butterfly, Carmen, Tosca, Le nozze di Figaro, and Così fan tutte.

For Toi Toi Opera in 2021 she had the absolute joy of performing the principal role of Suor Genovieffa in Suor Angelica & Elegies under the direction of Sara Brodie, and in their 2022 A Barber & Bernstein Double Bill, directed by Matthew Kereama, she sang the principal role of Geraldine in Barber’s A Hand of Bridge and was cover soprano soloist for Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915. For New Zealand Opera’s Christchurch mainstage season of Macbeth, directed by Netia Jones, she was cast in the comprimario role of Second Apparition.

In concert she recently performed as Papagena for New Zealand Opera’s Lazy Sundays in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, and as soprano soloist for Atlas Voices’ performances of Mozart’s Requiem and Ola Gjeilo’s Dark Night of the Soul. In late 2022 she was soprano soloist for the Christchurch City Choir’s Majesty concert – a celebration of the life of Queen Elizabeth II, featuring Mozart’s Coronation Mass in C (K.317).

Katherine also regularly performs in and around Ōtautahi as a solo recitalist, most recently with composer, pianist and organist Jeremy Woodside, and as part of The Operatives, an opera quintet which she and four friends launched at the Akaroa International Music Festival. She has also been delighted at the chance to indulge her passion for choral music in recent years, performing as a soloist and ensemble member with the Cantores Chamber Choir (Dir. Brian Law), the University of Canterbury Chamber Choir (Dir. Martin Setchell), the Christchurch Pops Choir (Dir. Luke Di Somma), Atlas Voices (Dir. Ravil Atlas), and the CSO Symphony Chorus.

In her former role as Operations Manager of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, Katherine had the chance to cut her teeth across all facets of the professional production management process ‘from page to stage’, as part of a tiny but amazingly knowledgeable and power-packed production team. Katherine oversaw the orchestra’s 2022 season, working on a diverse array of concerts and productions, and alongside a rich variety of artists - ranging from intimate chamber music concerts to full-scale mainstage symphonic and choral concerts such as the Verdi Requiem (featuring upwards of 300 performers), operas and ballets, children’s productions like Badjelly the Witch, and contemporary concerts featuring orchestra such as Tami Neilson’s Kingmaker.

Katherine is happiest on those rare occasions that allow the historical and musical sides of her brain to collide. For example in 2021, she provided archival research assistance to Sara Brodie as she shaped her exquisite narration for Suor Angelica and Elegies, based on the surviving letters home of NZ WW1 service personnel from the Western Front. Another highlight for Katherine in 2021, while working as an archivist at Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga Archives New Zealand, was having the indescribable privilege of leading the Crown waiata of welcome to Tā Tipene O’Regan and his Ngāi Tahu Archive tīma and their taonga, as they celebrated their cohabitation at the new state-of-the-art, purpose-built archival facility in Wigram, Christchurch.