wed 22/05/2013

David Nice

david.nice

David Nice's picture
Bio
David was formerly a music critic for the Guardian and Sunday Correspondent. A regular BBC music broadcaster, he has written books on Elgar, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky and the history of opera, and is currently working on the second volume of his Prokofiev biography for Yale University Press

Articles by David Nice

theartsdesk Q&A: Kate Lindsey and Katharina Thoma on Glyndebourne's Ariadne auf Naxos

What’s the perfect Glyndebourne opera? Mozart, of course, must have first and second places with Le nozze di Figaro – Michael Grandage’s lively production of country-house mayhem is revived again...

Read more...

The Pirates of Penzance, Scottish Opera, Theatre Royal, Glasgow

Of all the Savoy operas, this merry clash of pirates, policemen and a Major-General flanked by an entire chorus of loving daughters finds Sullivan most in tune with the mid-19th century Italian opera...

Read more...

The Leopard: 50 years on from Cannes

It took Sicilian aristocrat Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, melancholy last scion of a never very reproductive family, a lifetime to get round to writing one of the 20th century’s greatest novels....

Read more...

Public Enemy, Young Vic

Everything seems so free and easy, so do-as-you-darn-well-pleasey, in the Stockmanns’ fjord-view model home. Cheery friends in bright 1970s clothes drop in to chew the social cud as well as Mrs S’s...

Read more...

DVD: Les Misérables

Fans of this bewilderingly popular musical, and they are legion, will not be disappointed. Director Tom Hooper knows how to tell a fast-moving tale that makes light of the final running time (...

Read more...

Don Carlo, Royal Opera House

An operatic truism still doing the rounds declares that for Verdi's Il trovatore you need four of the greatest singers in the world. For Don Carlo, his biggest opus in every way, you need six....

Read more...

Power, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Wilson, Barbican Hall

Blether on MasterChef about love and passion for one’s craft has so devalued the currency that I hesitated in applying the terms to conductor John Wilson, last night moving from Hollywood and...

Read more...

Mangan, Royal Academy Opera Students, BBCSO, Denève, Barbican Hall

Highly sexed cockerels and cats, a lovesick lion and a ballet of frogs might not seem like a recipe, or rather a menagerie, for profundity. Yet in two ravishing French man (or child)-meets-beast...

Read more...

Monteverdi Choir, London Symphony Orchestra, Gardiner, Barbican Hall

Backed up by reasonably adventurous orchestral programming, lucky conductors can forge a strong Stravinsky evening by picking and mixing from his five ancient Greek rituals. Sir John Eliot Gardiner,...

Read more...

Cooper, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Fischer, Royal Festival Hall

Visiting orchestras and conductors often complain about agents’ insistence that they programme their main national dishes. The request is partly understandable: we all want to hear the Vienna...

Read more...

Lamsma, BBCSO, Brabbins, Barbican Hall/ Mei Yi Foo, Kings Place

Brave old world, that has so much unheard music in it. Not exactly the words of Shakespeare’s Miranda, I know, but that’s how I feel having experienced great things in the concert hall for the first...

Read more...

BBC Proms 2013: Ring operas for a fiver each

First, the good news: you can see Wagner’s entire Ring at the Royal Albert Hall, with absolutely the world’s finest Wagner singers and conductor in concert, for a grand total of £20. The bad news is...

Read more...

Nabucco, Royal Opera

"Oh, wretched old man! You are but the shadow of the king”, sings Plácido Domingo’s Nebuchadnezzar about himself in Lear-like abjection before his Goneril-Reganish daughter (the flame-throwing...

Read more...

Ubu Roi, Cheek by Jowl, Barbican Silk Street Theatre

Or, The Lord and Lady Macbeth of the Seizième, as imagined by a bourgeois teenager who fancies himself to be Bougrelas, heir to the Polish throne. That's one way of looking at the concept so...

Read more...

City of London Sinfonia, Layton, Southwark Cathedral

Read more...

Newcomers triumph at BBC Music Magazine Awards

We had, as presenter James Naughtie so wryly remarked, set aside our mourning weeds for the low-key glamour of celebrating a far from moribund classical recording industry. Movers, shakers and humble...

Read more...

How to contact David Nice

login/logout