Francesca Lauri is sought after as a collaborative pianist specialising in the vocal repertoire of song and opera. She recently won the Help Musicians Accompanist’s prize at the 2025 Kathleen Ferrier Awards and previously the collaborative piano prizes at the 2024 Royal Over-Seas League Competition, John Kerr Awards, Ashburnham English Song Awards, the AESS Dorothy Richardson English Song Prize, Eastbourne Singing Competition and the Somerset Song Prize. 

As a Young Artist, Francesca has participated in programmes including Leeds Lieder, Shipston Song, Oxford Song and the Wigmore French Song Exchange. She is a Samling Young Artist and works regularly with the Samling institute, including at the Academy and performing in their Wigmore Showcase. She 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, Veronique Gens and Audrey Hyland on French Song repertoire. Francesca was recently awarded the ‘Viola Tunnard Young Artist Award’ for her outstanding performance and contribution as a BPYAP emerging artist.

As well as her work in song, Francesca has repetiteured for productions of Albert Herring, Don Pasquale, La Boheme, Le Nozze di Figaro, La Cenerentola, La Traviata and more with opera companies such as Hurn Court and St Paul’s Opera. She has also enjoyed working as an assistant conductor for Gothic Opera and performed in their production of ‘Der Vampyr’ in the Grimeborn Festival. 

Francesca graduated in 2024 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 Prize, the Lies Askonas and the Joan Chissell Schumann 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 the RCM vocal department.