After the war, he won a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he studied with Dino Borgioli, Walter Hyde and Arthur Reckless.
[3] His other roles for Opera Australia and other companies such as South Australia State Opera included Don Pasquale, The Magic Flute, Falstaff, Boris Godunov, The Rake's Progress, The Rape of Lucretia, Cavalleria rusticana, Pagliacci, The Marriage of Figaro, The Turn of the Screw, Jenůfa, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, The Queen of Spades, Patience, Manon Lescaut, Káťa Kabanová, Peter Grimes, Tristan und Isolde, Fiddler on the Roof, Voss, Salome, Elektra, and Turandot.
[1] Having sung Aschenbach in the Australian premiere in Adelaide in 1980, Robert Gard was approached by Tony Palmer to assist in the film version.
The creator of the role, Peter Pears, was to sing Aschenbach but was recovering from a stroke and was unavailable for filming at that time.
In 1980 Doreen died of cancer, when he was in the final rehearsals for the Australian premiere of Death in Venice at the Adelaide Festival, in which he sang the role of Aschenbach.