George Robarts, baritone and Anna Michels, piano

George Robarts baritone
Anna Michels piano

George Robarts is the winner of the Kurt Weill Foundation’s 2025 Lotte Lenya Competition in New York. With a gift for rapid-fire text and a “great penchant for comedy” (Opera Scene), he has performed cabaret in recital alongside Dame Felicity Lott, who described his work as “laugh-out-loud funny”.

Stage highlights include a “side-splitting” turn (The Guardian) as Luiz in The Gondoliers with English Touring Opera, a singer-actor starring role as the Drunken Poet and Bottom in The Fairy Queen at Longborough, and principal and cover roles at Garsington, Buxton, the Grange Festival, the Edinburgh International Festival, and the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival. He has given recitals alongside Graham Johnson at the Oxford Song and Leeds Song Festivals, and debuts at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall in January 2027 with a Kurt Weill programme.

An award-winning translator and librettist, George’s new translations of Gluck’s Orpheus & Eurydice and Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro premiere in October 2026 for English Touring Opera and Oxford Opera respectively. He won the 2024 John Dryden Prize for his libretto The Revolting Maid (from Pergolesi’s La serva padrona), which premiered in 2025 with generous funding from the City Music Foundation.

George is a graduate of Oxford University with a First in German and Italian, and of the Guildhall Postgraduate programme with Distinction.

Scottish-Dutch pianist Anna Michels has performed internationally as a soloist and collaborative pianist. She was one of the first students to be awarded a double bachelor degree from Maastricht Conservatoire in the Netherlands, studying both piano and music theory. Anna graduated from her Masters and Artist Diploma at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland with Head of Keyboard Aaron Shorr.

As a collaborative pianist, Anna has won prizes internationally, including 1st prizes at the Scando Vocallis Lied Duo Competition, the Elgar Spedding Memorial Lied Competition, and the Cavatina Chamber Music Competition. She was selected as an Oxford Song Young Artist for 2024-25 alongside soprano Rosie Lavery.

Anna has an interest in unearthing hidden treasures of the classical repertoire, with a focus on Scottish composers. This has culminated in giving lecture-recitals internationally. As an awardee of the Chamber Music Scotland “Classical EDI Development Fund” for 2025, Anna has been researching the work and lives of composers Marie Dare and Isobel Dunlop.

Anna now coaches and accompanies at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and is the coach for the new Vocal Programme at St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh.