British baritone George Robarts is the winner of the 2025 Lotte Lenya Competition in New York.

He took home First Prize for a quickfire performance of G&S, Bock & Harnick, Sondheim, and a Kurt Weill interpretation described by the jury as “near perfect”.

With a gift for patter and a “great penchant for comedy” (Opera Scene), George has appeared in concert alongside Dame Felicity Lott, who described his work as “laugh-out-loud funny”.

He is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, the City Music Foundation Artist Programme, and the Young Artist Programmes at Garsington, Longborough, Oxford Song, and the Edinburgh International Festival.

George debuts with English Touring Opera in spring 2026 as Luiz in The Gondoliers, before joining the Buxton International Festival as Pritschitsch in The Merry Widow and Marchese in La traviata.

Upon graduation from the Guildhall in 2023, he starred in a singer-actor role as the Drunken Poet and Bottom in Longborough Festival Opera’s five-star production of The Fairy Queen.

He has since worked with Garsington Opera (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Platée, Un giorno di regno), the Grange Festival (Die Fledermaus, La traviata), Longborough Playground Opera (Carmen, The Elixir of Love), Opera Holland Park (Rigoletto), Nederlandse Reisopera (Das Wunder der Heliane), British Youth Opera (The Rape of Lucretia), the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival (The Pirates of Penzance), the Edinburgh International Festival (Capriccio), the BBC Proms (Dido and Aeneas), and many local companies and festivals.

George is an award-winning translator from German, Italian and French, having graduated with a First in Modern Languages from Oxford University.

Autumn 2026 sees the premiere of his two latest libretti: Gluck’s Orpheus & Eurydice for ETO, and Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro for Oxford Opera.

His opera translation The Revolting Maid (from Pergolesi’s La serva padrona) won the 2024 John Dryden Translation Prize and was premiered in 2025 with generous funding from the City Music Foundation.

An avid recitalist, in 2026-27 George performs Kurt Weill at St Martin-in-the-Fields and Bridgewater Hall, and debuts at the London Song Festival. He has sung Schubert with Graham Johnson at the Leeds Song Festival (Die schöne Müllerin) and the Oxford International Song Festival (Schubert in 1825).

Recital highlights in 2025-26 included Folk Songs with Thomas Eeckhout at the Oxford International Song Festival, Roxanna Panufnik’s Private Joe (2000) with the Kyan Quartet at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Poulenc’s Chansons gaillardes in Cambridge, and Butterworth’s Shropshire Lad in London, Chipping Campden, and Oxford.

George and pianist Edward Picton-Turbervill were prizewinners at the 2025 International Vocal Competition ’s-Hertogenbosch in its inaugural “Theatre in Song” edition, winning praise for their “brilliant interplay, musical and comedic timing, and their ability to intertwine humour with melancholy”. They frequently perform private musical entertainment as the duo George and the Dragon, with repertoire ranging from Noël Coward, Cole Porter, Tom Lehrer and Flanders & Swann to original material and bespoke song commissions.

George’s recent solo concert engagements include Five Mystical Songs (Sinfonia Smith Square), Petite Messe Solennelle (Edinburgh International Festival), Messiah (Mayfield Festival), Duruflé Requiem (Oxford International Song Festival), Christmas Oratorio, Brahms, Mozart and Fauré Requiems (St Martin-in-the-Fields), the Bach Passions, The Creation, and Elijah (UK choral societies).

“Phenomenal actor…
every moment spontaneous…
impeccable delivery of lyrics”
Kurt Weill Foundation: Lotte Lenya Prize

“Kelli-Ann Masterson and George Robarts are a side-splitting double act as secret lovers Casilda and Luiz”
★★★★★
The Guardian: The Gondoliers

“George Robarts deserves special praise for his lanky, delightful Bottom”
★★★★★
Plays to See: The Fairy Queen