Performer Profile
Craig Yates
Born in Birmingham, Craig demonstrated early promise as a singer being named Midland Choirboy of the Year 1992-93. He continued his studies at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, where he achieved a BA (Hons) in music and a Post Graduate Diploma in singing with distinction.
During his time at Wales’s National Conservatoire and as a member of Welsh National Youth Opera, he undertook many operatic roles; these included Aeneas (Dido and Aeneas), Lockitt (The Beggars Opera), Vicar (Albert Herring), La Chauve-Souris (L’Enfant et les Sortiléges), Frank (Die Fledermaus), Todd (Sweeney Todd), Figaro (La nozze di Figaro), Drebyednyetsov (Paradise Moscow), Father and Sandman (Hansel and Gretel), Lord Rochester (Rochester’s Second Bottle), Sid (Albert Herring) and Forrester (The Cunning Little Vixen). In 2003, he played the role of Sweeney Todd as part of the Cardiff International Festival of Music Theatre. In February 2003, he was the inaugural winner of the Welsh Young Musical Theatre Singer of the Year competition in Swansea.
In 2003, he was invited by Mme. Larissa Gergieva to continue his training at the world-renowned Mariinsky Academy for Young Singers in St. Petersburg, Russia. He is still the only British person to be offered such a place.
During 2005, he was offered his first work with Welsh National Opera where he played the roles of Kite Recorder and Teenage Kite in a new chamber opera called Red Flight Barcud. Since then, he has done numerous roles with WNO including the role of Mark in another chamber opera called Wild Cat, covered the role of Evan in the world premier of James MacMillan’s The Sacrifice, and the role of John Jones in Errollyn Wallen’s Carbon 12. He also works as a vocal animateur for the WNO MAX department.
Craig has recently been accepted for the late Yehudi Menuhin’s scheme Live Music Now, the largest outreach programme of its kind in the UK. He is also a founder member of the renowned choirs Serendipity and Only Men Aloud! with whom he has recently had great success in BBC 1’s Last Choir Standing.
