British baritone George Robarts has made a number of acclaimed debuts this year at song and opera festivals across the UK. A versatile singer-actor, he starred in Longborough Festival Opera’s new hybrid adaptation of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen (★★★★★ The Stage, Plays to See), multi-rolling between Bottom in the original Shakespeare and the sung part of the Drunken Poet. He joined Graham Johnson OBE at Leeds Lieder Festival in June, performing Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin at the Howard Assembly Room. On the opera stage, he also appeared as Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni (Cumbria Opera Group), Chorus in Verdi’s Rigoletto (Opera Holland Park) and Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane (Dutch Touring Opera), Claudio in Handel’s Agrippina (Hampstead Garden Opera), and Escamillo in an adaptation of Bizet’s Carmen for children (Longborough Playground Opera).
Solo concert appearances include Bach’s St John Passion in New York and Fauré’s Requiem in Florence. Recent recitals include George Walker songs for BBC Radio 3 Total Immersion, song cycles by Butterworth, Vaughan Williams, Schumann, Ravel, Beethoven and Tippett, and an eclectic evening of songs and poetry from the German Resistance at Oxford’s Levine Auditorium.
George graduated with Distinction from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where he studied on the postgraduate programme under Robert Dean. He is also a prize-winning translator, having previously read Modern Languages at Oxford University, graduating with First-Class Honours in 2017. He is a Longborough Festival Opera Emerging Artist, and is the winner of the Paul Hamburger Lieder Prize 2023.