Peter Braithwaite

Manchester born baritone Peter Brathwaite graduated with a first-class degree in Philosophy and Fine Art from Newcastle University and holds a Master’s with distinction from the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Russell Smythe at the RCM International Opera School. He continued his training at the Flanders Opera Studio, Ghent. He is the recipient of a 2016/17 International Opera Awards Bursary and the 2016 English Touring Opera Chris Ball Bursary.Other prizes include a Peter Moores Foundation Major Award and an Independent Opera Fellowship. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Churchill Fellow, and an alumnus of the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme.

Opera roles include Yamadori Madama Butterfly and Marcello La Boheme (Nederlandse Reisopera); Kaidama Il Furioso All’Isola Di San Domingo, L’incognito L’Assedio Di Calais, Elviro Xerxes, Silvano La Calisto and Schaunard La Boheme (all English Touring Opera); L’incognito L’Assedio Di Calais (Armel Festival Opera, Budapest); Sid La Fanciulla Del West(Opera Holland Park), and Nelson Porgy & Bess (Opéra de Lyon). His world premieres include Billy Bone in Lynne Plowman's Captain Blood’s Revenge (Glyndebourne); Luis in Randal Corsen’s Katibu Di Shon under Ed Spanjaard at the Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam (Nederlandse Reisopera); Mimoun in Emily Howard's Zatopek! at Queen Elizabeth Hall with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and recorded on the NMC label); Mr Lancashire in David Stoll's The Drummer Boy of Waterloo for Jubilee Opera at Aldeburgh, and Shakespeare settings by Alex Silverman for What You Will (Shakespeare's Globe), directed by Mark Rylance. His other performances in contemporary repertory include the demanding role of Jean in Philippe Boesmans' Julie for Operastudio Vlaanderen and premiere music by Orlando Gough in Othello at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Roles at the Royal College of Music included Nardo La Finta Giardiniera , Papageno Die Zauberfloete and Demetrius A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Brathwaite recently performed Mozart arias in televised concerts with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Tonu Kaljuste, and has appeared as a soloist with the London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra and BBC Concert, in venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Barbican, Birmingham Symphony Hall and deSingel, Antwerp. Festival appearances include Aldeburgh, Edinburgh International, Brighton, London Handel and Britten100 at BAM, New York. He has performed in recital at London Song Festival, Bridgewater Hall, the Elgar Room (Royal Albert Hall) and the Opera Vlaanderen with pianists including Graham Johnson and Alisdair Hogarth. Peter Brathwaite is the creator of the multimedia recital Degenerate Music: Music Banned by the Nazis. In collaboration with pianist Nigel Foster and digital artist James Symonds, the programme of previously banned works has been performed across the UK and recently toured to Studio Niculescu, Berlin.

In 2017/18 he sings Papageno Die Zauberflote at the Soho Theatre and on a tour of the UK, returns to the Spitalfields Music Festival for Feldspar Fogonogo including performances at Luxemburg, Hamburg, Denmark and London, Warder in Philip Hagemann’s The Dark Lady of Sonnets for Pegasus Opera, Effigies of Wickedness at the Gate Theatre and Cacambo Candide for West Green House Opera.  Further ahead he makes his role debut at La Monnaie/De Munt, Brussels in a new production directed by Ivo van Hove.