[4] 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.
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.
[5] He recalled that playing Danilo for the first time "was the hardest work I'd ever done in my life" due to the demands of acting, dancing, and the constant switching from sung to spoken text.
[2] Britten had first heard Douglas at the 1968 Edinburgh Festival where, only having ever sung the title role of Peter Grimes in German, he took over at three hours notice in English.
[15] The latter roles represented what one reviewer described as his "gallery of dotty eccentrics",[16] and his final performances aged 72 were as Hauk-Sendorf (which he had sung from 1995, including at the Brooklyn Academy of Music) at Glyndebourne in The Makropoulos Case.
[2] On the international scene, he sang Loge for the Opéra de Nice, Capriccio at the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania in 1993, and Herod with the Paris Opera in Seoul in 1994.
[17] Other roles creations during his career included Jack Worthing in Bunbury by Paul Burkhard (Basel, 1964),[3] l'Heureux in Madame Bovary by Heinrich Sutermeister (1967, Zurich), Philip in The Visitors by John Gardner (1972, Aldeburgh), Basil in The Servants by William Mathias for Welsh National Opera (1980),[1] as well as Frank Innes in Hermiston by Robin Orr, "a smooth villain, ...instantly dislikeable in Nigel Douglas's fluent and persuasive performance".
[3] The director David Pountney praised Douglas's humour, kindness and sensitivity while noting that his "professional success demanded other qualities, all of which he possessed: tenacity, discipline, reliability and adaptability... but also artistry, imagination and devotion to music-making of the highest standard".