London born lyric soprano Barbara Maria Rathbone established her career across London and Europe as a choral, concert and recital singer. She has performed at a wide variety of venues, such as the Barbican Centre, National Portrait Gallery, Grieghallen, Bergen, and the Royal Festival Hall.  She made her operatic debut as Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro and encouraged by German born conductor and pianist, Peter Gellhorn, developed a deep passion for art song and lieder. Recently she has sung for Fulham (now Regents) Opera as an apprentice in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and developed an art song performance project called Découpage.  

Barbara studied voice and piano at The London College of Music and at Trinity College of Music. After her early career she began to develop skills in the administrative side of the business and took a sabbatical from singing to pursue a career as an artist’s manager and established her own company, Musica Universalis, successfully representing instrumentalists and conductors nationally and internationally and co-curating concerts at Wigmore Hall and the BBC Proms. Missing performance and singing she returned to her former career in 2017 and studied vocal technique and pedagogy in-depth.  Barbara has long been fascinated by vocal health and singing in education and, as well as running a successful teaching practice, she is a trained vocal massage therapist and also trained as a learning facilitator at the Royal Opera House for its opera outreach programme.  Barbara maintains a portfolio as a teacher, choral singer, recitalist and opera singer. 

© Barbara Maria Rathbone 2023 © Photo by The Musician’s Photographer