Finding your Voice: Guest speaking at Reddam House
On Thursday 4 September 2025, I was invited to be a part of a public speaking event at Reddam House, North Shore Campus. The evening was a speech night for year 7-10 students, where 20 students presented their speeches to an auditorium of family, friends, peers and faculty. As guest speaker, I was asked to present on the topic “Finding your Voice”, a topic which really resonates with me.
Louise Keast, guest speaker at Reddam House, North Shore Campus, Public Speaking Event.
I greatly enjoyed sharing my story with the students at Reddam. They were highly engaged, intelligent and courteous young people.
Before the speech night began I did a short Q&A with the students, where I was overjoyed to learn that the week before, one of the students had initiated an excursion to attend Opera Australia’s performance of Carmen.
The students loved picking my brains about how I stay vocally fit and how many languages do I speak? How do I handle nerves? Do I play any other instruments? Where do I get my confidence from?
Below I share the speech I delivered at Reddam House. I have not altered it in anyway, but I have added some images to illustrate key moments. I feel that this blog on my website is a nice home for something which I greatly enjoyed writing and sharing. The speech shares many of my experiences from my student days and early career in Opera. I hope that in reading it, a greater understanding of who I am as an artist is grasped.
Good evening everyone,
And a special hello to my fellow speech night speakers. I want to start by saying how much I am enjoying listening to what you have to say on such a variety of topics. Thank you Ms Magao for inviting me to be a part of your speech night.
My name is Louise Keast, and I am an opera singer. I sing each evening at the Sydney Opera House as a member of the Opera Australia Chorus. We are currently in the middle of a big winter season of performances at Opera Australia, where on one night I will be singing in Carmen, and then the next La Bohème. During the day, we are rehearsing for different upcoming projects like the Mozart Requiem at City Recital Hall soon, or performances on tour in Canberra this October or Melbourne this November. I also understudy at Opera Australia, so some days I might have to fit in a coaching with the music staff on my role or jump in for a cast change rehearsal, cover call or in the event that the person I am covering is sick, in the performance I don’t do my usual track in the chorus, but I do the performance in the role. Getting to do a jump in is always exhilarating, but definitely comes with some nerves, and one or two bloopers along the way.
Did I always know that I wanted to be an opera singer? The answer might surprise you - no!
Growing up, I lived in a mining town called Broken Hill in far west New South Wales. I was actually born in Sydney, but when I was very young my parents moved with my sister and I out to the bush. My weekends were often spent walking the dogs along dry riverbeds, exploring ‘the outback’ - spotting roos, riding bikes and my favourite activity at night was stargazing.
Music has been a constant in my life. My mother is very musical, a great piano player, and started me with violin lessons aged 2 and a half years old. Her mother, in fact, was an opera singer. I remember when I was about 7 years old, I decided I wanted to ‘upgrade’ to the larger and more romantic instrument of the cello. I remember my mum asking me “would you like me to teach you to play the piano?” to which I answered, “No!”. How much I regret that decision now, as I clunk away at the keyboard teaching my singing students these days with my rudimentary piano skills… Anyway - I was lucky that in Broken Hill there was a wonderful music teacher named Le’Neta. Learning with Le’Neta was one of my first experiences of finding ‘my team’. Le’Neta is a person who cares deeply about children’s music education- so much so that If there was a student in town who wanted to play a particular instrument, Le’Neta would learn it herself to be able to teach it to a child.
Aged 18, in Sydney after a day playing in workshops with the Australian Chamber Orchestra (2011).
When I was 15, in year 10, I was successful in getting a music scholarship to a boarding school 14 hours drive away, in Orange. My cello playing had got to a level that in order to continue developing, I needed to find a bigger world in which to grow. This school had its own orchestra, as well as a chamber strings ensemble and a chamber choir. We were able to do excursions to Sydney to play in workshops with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and compete in the Sydney Eisteddfod.
I was the type of student that loved a lot of things. I loved English, visual arts, I did public speaking and debating, I loved ancient history as well as music. I wasn’t quite sure what career path I wanted to follow, I felt like I could go many different directions. In my HSC year I began to have private singing lessons, and it was my singing teacher who suggested why don't I apply to audition for a Bachelor of Music at Queensland Conservatorium. I travelled up to Brisbane with my mum, and she accompanied me in my audition for the Con. Out of the hundreds of applicants, miraculously I was one of 7 singers chosen to join the Opera program there.
Now you might be thinking that this was the beginning of my ascent into the opera industry, however what happened was a bit of a train wreck. I learnt alot about myself and the resilience required for this career path. I didn’t find at the con the nurturing style of teaching that I had unknowingly been lucky to have so far in my life. It was tough to receive criticism about your voice, when the act of singing is so closely linked to self-expression. To be an artist is to share something of yourself with an audience. Maybe at 18 years old, I just didn't have tough enough skin. I now know that my nervous system was in a state of fight or flight. I didn’t feel safe, because the con at that time in my experience, wasn’t a place of safety. It was a place of competition, where my peers strived to be ‘the best’ singer.
Visiting the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona (2014).
As an artist, what does it mean to be ‘the best’? I could feel in my gut that my schema for ‘success’ didn’t align with that of a university structure, and in the second year of my Bachelor of Music I dropped out of the con. This isn’t to say that studying music at university isn’t the right thing to do for some people, it just was not the right thing, or place, for me.
So what did I do? I took a break from singing, I moved back home to live with my parents, I got a retail job and saved up enough money to go on my first big trip to Europe. I saw opera overseas for the first time at the Royal Opera House in London, I ate Wiener Schnitzel in Vienna and went to the top of the tallest mountain in Switzerland. I went to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and saw Botticelli’s Venus. I spent a day bikeriding around Amsterdam and in Paris one afternoon I sat and sketched the sculptures in the garden at the Rodin Museum.
I came back to Australia feeling like the world is so much bigger than the pigeon hole we sometimes get put in.
I enrolled in a Bachelor of Art History and Curatorship at the Australian National University and moved to Canberra. The whole time I was at Art School, would you believe that I just couldn’t stop singing. I would say that I have an entrepreneurial spirit, and so I began to put on concerts with my friends in Canberra. We would perform short operas, or recitals. My passion for this artform began to be nurtured by a wonderfully caring singing teacher I found named Christina.. She helped me find my spark again. Singing with like minded friends put the fun back into performing again. I strongly believe, whats the point in pursuing something if you aren’t enjoying it?
If we jump forward a few years, to 2020 I’d just recently moved to Melbourne. I’d been successful in auditioning for a young artists program with Melbourne Opera, side note - it was in this singing program that I met and became friends with Ms Magao! I had got a job at a performing arts theatre in Melbourne as an usher, and when March 2020 rolled around we all know what happened. Melbourne went into lockdown. All the performing arts venues closed and just as I was starting to build a network of musicians, singers and contacts in the opera industry everything stopped. The theatre I worked for, was actually owned by a local council and the council amazingly ran a program for staff who had been stood down by the pandemic to apply for a secondment to another department. I had never had an office job before, however I needed to pay my rent, and so I applied for a 6 week contract printing security access passes. I turned up to council on my first day to meet my new boss Claire, who was in charge of Public Liability and governance. Claire and I clicked, she was an opera enthusiast, and for the next 2 years I worked in Claire’s team on various projects. I still never printed a single security access pass! I mainly built databases, and relied on my skills for jumping in and giving something a go. Claire would call me at around 4 pm most days and ask “have you done your singing practice yet today?” I’d say “no claire I’ve been working on this spreadsheet or something similar” and she would always reply - “time to log off and do your singing practice”. At no other time in history has every opera house across the globe been closed at the same time. But while the opera industry was in complete shutdown, Claire kept me singing. Another person I had found to be on “team Louise”.
Briefly in between Lockdowns, Melbourne Opera miraculously performed a season at the Regent Theatre of the opera Das Rheingold by the composer Richard Wagner. This is an operatic prelude that’s 2 and a half hours long with no break, the first in a cycle of 4 operas that are usually performed all together to tell a story that is 15 hours long. Opera doesn’t get much bigger than this. I was cast in my first ever principal role, singing the role of Wellgunde who is one of the Rheinmaidens in the opera. A mermaid sort of creature, who with her 2 sisters Woglinde and Flosshilde, my character's job was to protect from any threats or theft, a huge horde of gold that is at the bottom of the Rhine river- the Rheingold. In this production, the 3 rheinmaidens were situated on illuminated LED rings that were suspended in the air. We were attached by a cord to a boom above the theatre stage. My feet could not touch the ground as we were floating up in the air.
The Rheinmaidens are the first characters you meet in the opera, which means we got our call to stage before the performance started and were pre-set on the rings. The curtain was drawn and I would hear each evening the orchestra of more than 100 players tune, before the audience would applaud the conductor as he entered the pit. The excitement and nerves were mounting as I was swaying on the ring in the darkness before the curtain was raised and we were revealed to an audience of over 2000 people. No pressure! I would combat my nerves with a technique called a mantra. This is a bit embarrassing to share, but when I felt the nerves rising up in my stomach I would say softly to myself “I am a goddess”. I would repeat it several times to myself as the introduction played until I felt so grounded and steadfast in my confidence that what I had to share was powerful.
A few months later, I had my first opportunity to perform with Opera Australia in Melbourne at the State Theatre. I sang as an extra-chorister in two operas both by the composer Giuseppe Verdi - Ernani and Aida. This was opera on a grand scale, and my first opportunity to work with opera singers who had been working in the industry for decades. Their skill level was intimidating to say the least. I remember in the Triumphant March in the Act 2 finale of Aida, I was one of a group of singers allocated to be wheeled on stage on a grand staircase. I was wearing towering heels, a helmet boasting an eagle on top, a full glam gown make of beads and a huge cape adorned with tassels and embroidery - not the easiest costume to maneouveur in. As the staircase was pushed on by the mechanists, it shuddered from side to side. I grounded myself by mentally repeating my mantra - and thankfully I haven’t yet fallen off that stair case in Aida.
In costume at my dressing table at the State Theatre, Melbourne, for my first performance with Opera Australia ever - Ernani. This production and costume was from La Scala, Milan. (2021).
A few days later, I had been invited to do a stage audition for the Artistic Director of the company. I was the first person auditioning that morning, and I remember arriving at the stage door of the theatre on an icy Melbourne morning with gloves, beanie and a puffer jacket pulled on over my performance gown. I had 10 minutes to rehearse with the pianist, someone who I had never met before, and then I was ready waiting at the door to stage when the panel arrived for the morning auditions. I’ll never forget walking out onto the stage for my audition. Gone were the sets of Aida and Ernani, all the black masking curtains were removed, it was a completely empty theatre stage except for a grand piano. It looked more like a cavernous aeroplane hanger than the theatre stage that I had been performing on each night. Sitting far back in the stalls of the theatre were the panel of about 6 people. The 6 most important people in opera land, with more than 2000 empty seats around them. I walked out with my pianist, acknowledged the panel, took a deep breath and as the introduction of my first aria play - you know what I did? I said my mantra! I think I might have added a “you’ve got this”.
A couple of days later I received an email from the chorusmaster asking if I could come and speak to him during the interval of that evenings performance of Ernani. I really didn’t know what to expect, and as I sat down he asked me “Louise, what do you think of Sydney?”, I said “Paul, I think I need more information… I like Sydney but what do you mean?” on the spot he offered me a job in the full-time chorus at Opera Australia. I was completely shocked, a full-time job as a singer was not even an option on my radar. I felt like I had been given a golden ticket in willy wonka. A few months later I packed up my life in Melbourne and moved to Sydney.
I remember in the weeks before I left for sydney, when the news about my job had come out, I was at a performance talking with a patron afterwards. He said something to me that has never sat well with me, as well intentioned as it may have been. He said “go sing in the chorus, but make sure you dont stay there longer than two years”. I’ve thought about that conversation alot, the judgement that this random person was making on my life’s decisions. Was this person someone I trusted on ‘team louise’? No. Was this person trying to lift me up or pull me down? To this day I feel his words jar against what success feels like to me. To be so lucky to make music with others, every single day, that is what feels important to me.
My first ever jump-in as the Fortune Teller in La Traviata (Elijah Moshinsky production), State Theatre Melbourne (2022). I was so nervous that completely I forgot to put on all the beaded jewlery and bangles that this costume has with it!
The next time I sang in Melbourne, was my first time touring with Opera Australia. We were back performing at The State Theatre again, in another Wagner opera Lohengrin and La Traviata by Verdi. That production of Traviata, or Trav as we call it, is very classic and faithful to the score. We are all in corseted velvet gowns, it really does take you back in time to 1830s Paris. There is an acting role in Act 2 of Trav, where a fortune teller arrives at a party to tell the fortunes of a couple of characters amid an evening of gambling, drinking and debauchery. I was covering the fortune teller, and one day around lunchtime I got the phone call to say that my colleague was sick and I would perform the role of the fortune teller that evening. I remember I was in a woolworths metro at the time, and I immediately felt sick. I had never rehearsed the role before, which involved a choreographed dance and very specific timing of various interactions with the principal singers as they sang and I told them their fortunes. The assistant director asked me to arrive at the theatre early, and in my dressing room he had organised for stage management to bring me the props I would need to learn to navigate. A crystal ball and an electric cigarette! You might have guessed, but I don’t smoke and I had never smoked on stage before! We went through the blocking and the choreography- I learnt which beats to bump my hips on, when to move to the table and begin the fortune telling and then when to stand on a chair and keep dancing! I’d then have a 90 second quick change side of stage to be back into my original costume and track in the chorus and continue on with the show…. No pressure!
The show started and in interval I put on the fortune teller’s costume for the first time. “I’ve got this” I said to myself. “I am a fortune telling, crystal ball carrying goddess!”. I went to stage, and as the moment came to enter with crystal ball in one hand and cigarette in the other, I realised I had to navigate squeezing through a fringed curtain that I couldn’t really see what I was stepping out into! In my nervousness I think I started puffing on my cigarette like a chain smoker, I shook my hips, hopefully at the right times, and as I moved in to position at the table to sit down and read their fortunes, you wont believe it, but the crystal ball tipped out of my hand and THUD, it fell onto the table. I recovered as best I could and got on with telling fortunes.That’s just what you do in those moments - you keep going. You back yourself, believe in yourself, and you just make it work.
I’ve since done alot of jumping in at Opera Australia, both in singing roles and acting roles. It’s actually come to be one of the parts of the job I find the most fun, as it’s creative and keeps you in the moment. You can’t be thinking about what to buy at the grocery shops tomorrow or your to-do list when you’re on a mission to do something on stage you’ve never rehearsed or ever done before. In that first jump in as fortune teller, I also learnt that alot of my confidence comes from my singing ability. For years I have known that I am a skilled opera singer, but it has taken practice for me to feel as confident on stage acting in non-singing roles, when the structure of the musical phrase is taken away and the only thing to hold on to, as it happens, is a crystal ball and a cigarette.
I hope that listening to my story, you feel encouraged to find the people on ‘your’ team. Find the people who lift you up, who want to see you achieve and see in you something special. Be that person for others. Creating your team is a lifelong project, but without realising it I am sure you already have people on your team. They might be your parents, or Ms Magao. Your siblings, aunts and uncles or grandparents. They might be your neighbour, or sports coach or another teacher at school. Your team will change over the years, just as you will, but I believe if you’re walking down the right path in life then the right people will walk with you and open the right doors along the way.
Thank you for listening, and I hope to see you at the opera sometime soon!
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading!
If you feel like leaving a comment below, I would love to hear from you.
