Francesca Lauri is a collaborative pianist specialising in the vocal repertoire of song and opera. She recently won the collaborative piano prize at the 2024 Royal Over-Seas League competition, and previously the 2023 AESS Dorothy Richardson English Song Prize and the 2022 Somerset Song Prize. Francesca was a finalist in the 2024 Kathleen Ferrier competition alongside prize winners Samling Artist Madeline Boreham and Charlotte Jane Kennedy. Also with Madeline, she won the LSF Schubert Prize and they performed the final recital in the 2024 Summer Festival. She recently made her BBC Radio 3 debut alongside duo partner Samling Artist Dafydd Jones after their performance at the Wigmore Hall in which he won the ROSL Gold Medal.
As a Young Artist, Francesca has participated in Leeds Lieder, Samling Artist Programme and Shipston Song and was the Sam Hutchings scholar at the Oxenfoord International Summer School. Francesca is passionate about French Melodie and was the Viola Tunnard Scholar during her time as a Britten Pears Young Artist where she worked closely with Susan Manoff, Véronique Gens and Audrey Hyland on French Song repertoire. Alongside duo partner Ellen Pearson, Francesca is a 2024-25 Oxford Song Young Artist.
As well as performing song repertoire, Francesca has repetiteured for opera companies including Hurn Court Opera’s productions of Don Pasquale and La bohème, and SPO’s production of Albert Herring. She was also assistant conductor for Gothic Opera for two years running and performed in their production of Der Vampyr at the Grimeborn Festival last August. She looks forward to repetiteuring for Hurn Court again in April 2025 for their production of La Cenerentola.
Francesca recently graduated with distinction from her postgraduate studies in Collaborative Piano at the Royal College of Music where she was the recipient of the Ian Evans Lombe Scholarship, studying with Simon Lepper, Kathron Sturrock and Roger Vignoles. She was supported generously by the Countess of Munster trust and
won the pianist prizes in the Lieder competition, the Lies Askonas, the Joan ChissellSchumann competition and received second prize in the English Song competition. In 2022, she graduated from Trinity Laban,under the tutelage of Sergio de Simone, with First-Class Honours, receiving the TCL Silver Medal for piano studies and the David Gosling Prize for Piano Accompaniment.
She is the current Lord and Lady Lurgan collaborative piano fellow for RCM’s vocal department.
