George Robarts
Baritone
George Robarts won First Prize in the 2025 Lotte Lenya Competition in New York, earning praise from the Kurt Weill Foundation as a “phenomenal actor” with “impeccable delivery”.
George made his recital debut at Leeds Song in 2023 alongside Graham Johnson, performing Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin for a lecture recital on the cycle’s 200th anniversary. He has given recitals at the Holywell Music Room, Milton Court, and St Martin-in-the-Fields, with highlights including a semi-staged performance of Roxanna Panufnik’s cycle Private Joe with the Kyan Quartet.
With a gift for rapid-fire text and a “great penchant for comedy” (Opera Scene), George has performed Noël Coward and Tom Lehrer songs in concert alongside Graham Johnson and Dame Felicity Lott, and has devised original performances around the works of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht.
Upon graduation from the Guildhall postgraduate programme in 2023, George made his stage debut in The Fairy Queen at Longborough, starring in a singer-actor multi-role as the Drunken Poet and Bottom. He has since covered Starveling A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Garsington Opera and played the Commissario and covered Barone Douphol La traviata for the Grange Festival. Other recent highlights include Junius The Rape of Lucretia for British Youth Opera, Noye Noye’s Fludde at St Edmundsbury Cathedral, Count Almaviva Le nozze di Figaro and Leporello Don Giovanni for Cumbria Opera, and Zweiter Diener Capriccioat the Edinburgh International Festival.
As a concert soloist, he has sung Five Mystical Songs at Smith Square, Petite Messe Solennelle at Queen’s Hall Edinburgh, St John Passion at St Bartholomew’s New York, St Matthew Passion at Dorchester Abbey, Christmas Oratorio at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Messiah at the Mayfield Festival, Requiems by Mozart, Brahms and Fauré, and the title role in Elijah.
An accomplished linguist and fluent German and Italian speaker, George’s debut opera translation The Revolting Maid (from Pergolesi’s La serva padrona) won the 2024 John Dryden Prize. A new production directed by Sophie Daneman premiered in London in 2025, thanks to a generous funding grant from the City Music Foundation, and was described by Dame Felicity Lott as “laugh-out-loud funny”.
George read Modern Languages at Oxford University, graduating with First-Class Honours in 2017. As an Academical Clerk in the Choir of New College under Edward Higginbottom and Robert Quinney, he sang on tours of the Vatican, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the USA.
Updated September 2025
