Robert Tear, CBE (8 March 1939 – 29 March 2011) was a Welsh tenor and conductor.
Tear was born in Barry, Glamorgan, Wales, UK. He attended Barry Boys' Grammar School and was a choral scholar at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied under Kimbell. He was later elected an Honorary Fellow of the College. His operatic début 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 début at Covent Garden as Lensky in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. He made his début as a conductor in 1985 in Minneapolis.
Tear was 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 was well-known for his duets with Benjamin Luxon, reviving many Victorian parlour songs.
Tear was 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 was married with two daughters and lived in West London. Tear's death was announced on 29 March 2011.
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