Ian Rosenblatt

Ian Isaac Rosenblatt OBE (born 2 November 1959) is a British lawyer, senior partner of corporate law firm Rosenblatt Solicitors, and a supporter of charitable causes, notably in the field of classical music. He is the founder and sponsor of the Rosenblatt Recitals, London's only world-class series of opera recitals, inaugurated in 2000 and based since the 2012/13 season at Wigmore Hall. In 2013 he launched the Branscombe Festival in Devon, and he is also Honorary Co-Treasurer of the Royal Philharmonic Society and a trustee of the Susan Chilcott Scholarship Fund for young singers. In 2013 Rosenblatt saved North West London’s long-established Les Aldrich Music Shop from imminent closure by becoming its owner. He also supports a number of other musical causes and a variety of charities in other social and medical fields.

Rosenblatt was born in Liverpool to a businessman father and academic mother – sister of the well-known actors Clive Swift and David Swift – and was educated at Liverpool College and the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he studied Law. He is a member of The Law Society.

His love of the singing voice grew from his family environment. His father was one of 12 siblings from an immigrant Jewish family, several of whom were synagogue cantors. “Singing was almost a contact sport in my house,” he has said. “It was all about who could sing higher and louder. We’re talking about serious operatic trainspotting here, where a record would go on and two bars of something would be played and you had to guess the singer.” Each morning, before leaving for work, his father would play the same Decca recording of Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata, starring Joan Sutherland, Carlo Bergonzi and Robert Merrill. The young Rosenblatt was also regularly taken by his maternal grandparents to concerts given by the Liverpool Philharmonic. On arriving in London as a student in 1977 Rosenblatt made a priority of queuing for a ticket to see Luciano Pavarotti in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera at the Royal Opera House.

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