Born in Perth, Scotland, Stuart Patterson studied singing in Glasgow, Florence and Paris. Between 1994 and 1998, he was a member of the troupe of the Teatro Verdi di Pisa in Italy where he sang mainly Mozart, Monteverdi and Rossini. Since then, he has been a guest at opera houses in a wide variety of character roles. He has sung more than 130 roles including: at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, La Chauve Souris, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Andrea Chénier; in Torino The Rake's Progress, Die Teufel von Loudun by Penderecki and Kiss me Kate by Cole Porter; at the Paris Comic Opera La scala di seta, La Didone by Cavalli, Le Pauvre Matelot by Milhaud; at the Lyon Opera, Manon Lescaut, Shostakovich's Le Nez and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Elsewhere, he has sung Mireille by Gounod, La Belle Hélène, The Long Christmas Dinner by Hindemith, Zaïde by Mozart, Acis and Galatea by Handel, The Lighthouse by Peter Maxwell-Davies, the title role in Orfeo by Monteverdi, Madame Butterfly and in 2015, the role of Herodes in Salome by R. Strauss, in Taiwan.

At the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, he played the roles of Remendado in Carmen in two different productions, as well as Schmidt in Werther. His first Wagnerian rôle, that of Steuermann in The Flying Dutchman, was at Besançon Opera House. Then in 2005 he sang Mime in Siegfried at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, a role which he sang again in another production in Lübeck, Germany in 2009, 2010 and 2011. He sang Falstaff (Bardolfo) and L'Incoronazione di Poppea (Arnalta et Nutrice) in Budapest and Vicenza (Italy) with the Hungarian conductor Ivàn Fisher and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. With the same team, he is currently preparing the role of Scaramuccio in Ariadne auf Naxos.

He maintains a long friendship with the Lausanne Opera where he sang in Gianni Schicchi, Le Nozze di Figaro, Il Signor Bruschino, Le Nez, Falstaff, La Flûte Enchantée, L'Enfant et les Sortilèges, La Bohème, Les Mamelles de Tirésias, Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor, La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein, La Vie Parisienne, and in the 2022-23 season, Candide by Bernstein.

Stuart has also directed several productions including L'Ivrogne Corrigé by Gluck, Le Docteur Miracle by Bizet, Les Bavards by Offenbach, Noye's Fludde by Britten (with the Geneva Chamber Orchestra conducted by Arie van Beek) and, in 2020, Krasa's Brundibar. Professor of singing at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Genève-Neuchâtel 2012-2024, he was also for several years professor of English lyric diction at the CNSM in Paris. In 2009, he created the Festival Lyrique de Montperreux (France) of which he remained artistic director until 2020.