Early life and training[edit]
Kelsey was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and began performing opera in 1991 as a chorus member of the Hawaii Opera Theatre.[3] He received his bachelor's degree in music with a major in vocal performance from the University of Hawaii at Manoa under John W. Mount.[4] He has studied in the following programs: Chautauqua Institute with Marlena Malas, San Francisco's Merola Opera Program under Sherry Greenwald and Mark Morash, and three years at Chicago's Lyric Opera Center for American Artists (now known as the Ryan Opera Center), during which he sang Wagner in Gounod's Faust and Yamadori and the Registrar in Puccini's Madama Butterfly.[1] He was also on the roster of the Marilyn Horne Foundation for two years,[3] won a scholarship from the Solti Foundation of Chicago in 2003, was a finalist of the Plácido Domingo Operalia Competition in 2004, and represented the United States in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition in 2005.[5]
Personal life[edit]
Kelsey met his former wife, soprano Marjorie Owens, originally from Chesapeake, Virginia, when both were resident at the Ryan Opera Center in Chicago.[27] Kelsey and Owens occasionally sang together on tour, performing Il trovatore in Dresden[28] and giving duo recitals, for instance, in Honolulu (25 January 2015);[29] in Santa Fe (2 August 2015), where Kelsey was performing in Rigoletto;[30] and in New York City (10 December 2017) at the Morgan Library's Gilder Lehrman Hall.[31] Chicago remains as Kelsey's main home base. He became engaged to Canadian mezzo-soprano Deanna Pauletto in 2018 and they welcomed their daughter Leonora Kelsey to the world in 2023.
Quinn enjoys cigars and has been featured in Cigar Aficionado magazine.[32]
Awards[edit]
In 2015, Kelsey was the recipient of the Met's Beverly Sills Artist Award[33] and in 2022, one of the 17th annual Opera News Awards (along with Denyce Graves and Elsa van den Heever), awarded by Opera News magazine.[34]
Streaming videos are available at Met Opera on Demand of his performances in the following roles:
A streaming video is available at the Lyric Opera of Chicago website of his performance as: