Robert Tear

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Robert Tear CBE (born 8 March, 1939) is a Welsh tenor and conductor.

Robert Tear was born in Barry, Glamorgan, Wales, UK. He was educated at Barry Boys' Grammar School and was a choral scholar at King's College, Cambridge.

His operatic debut was in 1966 as Peter Quint in Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw on the English Opera Group's tour of England and Russia. In 1970 he made his debut at Covent Garden as Lensky in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. He made his debut as a conductor in 1985 in Minneapolis.

Tear has been closely associated with the music of British composers Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett. He created the role of Dov in Tippett's opera The Knot Garden. During the 1989-90 season, he made a highly successful debut with the Glyndebourne Touring Company as the tormented Aschenbach in Britten's Death in Venice.

He is well-known for his duets with Benjamin Luxon, reviving many Victorian parlour songs.

Tear has made over 250 records for many major recording companies. Roles he has sung on disc range in diversity from Uriel in Haydn's "Creation" to the painter in Alban Berg's Lulu, and from Pitichinaccio in Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann to Sir Harvey in Donizetti's Anna Bolena. His many classical recordings include performances of Bach, Handel, Monteverdi, Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Bruckner, Stravinsky, Janáček and Messiaen. In the English canon, he has also recorded songs by Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Arthur Butterworth.

He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama (Coleg Brenhinol Cerdd a Drama Cymru). In 1984, he was awarded the CBE.

He is married with two daughters and currently lives in West London.