Peter Brathwaite is an acclaimed baritone, based in the UK and performing internationally. He is noted for his versatile, charismatic and intelligent performances. Following his success creating the role of Gbatokai in the Olivier Award-winning Festen by Mark-Anthony Turnage and Lee Hall at the Royal Ballet & Opera, Covent Garden last season, he recently returned to the house to originate the title role in The Wish Thief by Leighton Jones. His 2025/26 season continues with performances in Barbados, Sri Lanka, and at the Finnish National Opera and Ballet.

Recent seasons have included principal roles at La Monnaie / De Munt, the Royal Ballet & Opera, and the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre as part of New Music Days Ostrava, alongside performances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Philharmonie de Paris, Opéra national de Lorraine, and Théâtre de Caen. He was an artist-in-residence with Britten Pears Arts, Aldeburgh, and in 2024/25 was invited to the University of Oxford as a Distinguished Visitor at The Queen’s College—a residency that brought his interdisciplinary practice into dialogue with scholars, students, and archival collections. In July 2023, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music (DMus) from Newcastle University, his alma mater.

He was commissioned by Kensington Palace | Historic Royal Palaces to create a new Rediscovering Black Portraiture work for the 2024 exhibtion Untold Lives: A Palace at Work. A solo exhibition of his work was on view at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery from April to September 2023. His work can be seen at Barbados Museum & Historical Society, the National Portrait Gallery, London, Museum Hof van Busleyden, Belgium, and Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio. Brathwaite curated Mischief in the Archives (Bodleian Libraries, 2024), an exhibition exploring creative ways to confront gaps in Caribbean archival history. It formed part of the We Are Our History project, which received the University of Oxford Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.

He writes and presents for BBC Radio 3 and his first book, Rediscovering Black Portraiture, was published by Getty Publications in Spring 2023. He is currently writing a family history of Barbados, which Chatto & Windus (a division of Vintage at Penguin Random House) will publish in 2026/27. In connection with the development of this book, Brathwaite was named one of the winners of the Eccles Institute and Hay Festival Writer's Award for 2025.