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

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

A stand-out performer of English music with a gift for rapid-fire text and a “great penchant for comedy” (Opera Scene), George has performed cabaret songs alongside Dame Felicity Lott and Graham Johnson.

Opera highlights include a singer-actor starring role as the Drunken Poet and Bottom The Fairy Queen (Longborough Festival Opera), Count Almaviva Le nozze di Figaro and Leporello Don Giovanni (Cumbria Opera), Commissario and cover Barone Douphol La traviata (Grange Festival), cover Starveling A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Garsington Opera), Junius The Rape of Lucretia (British Youth Opera), and Zweiter Diener Capriccio (Edinburgh International Festival).

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

In recital, he has sung Schubert with Graham Johnson at Leeds Lieder (Die schöne Müllerin) and at Oxford Lieder (Schubert in 1825).

Recital highlights in 2025-26 include Folk Songs from Britain & Ireland with Thomas Eeckhout at Oxford Song, Roxanna Panufnik’s cycle 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 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”.

A published translator from German and Italian, George’s debut opera translation The Revolting Maid (from Pergolesi’s La serva padrona) won the 2024 John Dryden Translation Prizeand was premiered in London in 2025 thanks to a generous funding grant from the City Music Foundation.

Solo concert engagements in 2024 and 2025 include Five Mystical Songs (Sinfonia Smith Square), Petite Messe Solennelle (Edinburgh International Festival), Messiah (Mayfield Festival), Duruflé Requiem (Oxford Song), Christmas Oratorio, Fauré Requiem and Mozart Requiem (St Martin-in-the-Fields), the Bach Passions, The Creation, and Elijah (UK choral societies).

A fluent German and Italian speaker, he read Modern Languages at Oxford University, graduating with First-Class Honours in 2017. He has literary, academic and commercial book publications to his name, as well as an award-winning opera libretto and three placings in major translation awards.

“Phenomenal actor… every moment spontaneous… impeccable delivery of lyrics”
Kurt Weill Foundation

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