fri 18/07/2025

David Nice

David Nice's picture
Bio
The classical music and opera editor of theartsdesk, David writes, lectures and broadcasts on music. A former music critic for The Guardian and The Sunday Correspondent, he has made regular appearances on BBC Radio 3, not least in the long-running series Building a Library. He has written short studies 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. He runs two Zoom lecture series, Opera in Depth on Mondays and a symphonies course on Thursdays.

Articles By David Nice

The Marriage of Figaro, English National Opera review - energised attitudes, lower-level humanism

Read more...

Frang, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - hearing the silence

Read more...

Susanna, Royal Opera/London Handel Festival review - fitful shinings

Read more...

Bach St John Passion, Bach Collegium Japan, Suzuki, Barbican review - intense pain and dancing consolation

Read more...

RuPaul's Drag Race, Season 12, Netflix review - 13 queens up the game

Read more...

Hilary Mantel: Return to Wolf Hall, BBC Two review - the storyteller and the truth

Read more...

Sean Shibe, Wigmore Hall review - mesmerising journey from light to dark

Read more...

SCO, Emelyanychev, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - Beethoven at too insistent a lick

Read more...

The Revenger's Tragedy, Piccolo Teatro di Milano/Cheek by Jowl, Barbican review - fun, but not enough

Read more...

Fidelio, Royal Opera review - fitfully vivid singing in a dramatic void

Read more...

Denk, LPO, Vänskä, RFH review - 200 years of joy and sorrow

Read more...

Simon Trpčeski, Barbican review - a charismatic chameleon

Read more...

Joanna MacGregor, Adrian Brendel, Gildas Quartet, Wigmore Hall review - gold and silver

Read more...

Aimard, Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, Roth, RFH review - Beethoven as avant-gardist

Read more...

Mahler's 'Resurrection' Symphony, Philharmonia, Hrůša, RFH review - big picture, stunning details

Read more...

La Cage aux Folles [The Play], Park Theatre review - half-cock farce

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Harvest review - blood, barley and adaptation

Lovers of a particular novel, when it’s adapted as a movie, often want book and movie to fit together as a hand in a glove. You want it to be like...

Poor Clare, Orange Tree Theatre review - saints cajole us si...

What am I, a philosophical if not political Marxist whose hero is Antonio Gramsci, doing in Harvey Nichols buying Comme des Garçons...

Album: Alex Warren - You'll Be Alright, Kid

The best-selling single so far this year in the UK is ...

That Bastard, Puccini!, Park Theatre review - inventive comi...

Before Luigi Illica wrote the libretti for Puccini’s Tosca and Madama Butterfly, he had joined the composer as the...

Hamlet, Buxton International Festival review - how to re-ima...

Ambroise Thomas’s version of Hamlet is the flagship production of this year’s Buxton International Festival and was always going to be a...

Friendship review - toxic buddy alert

The frenetic brand of humour that Tim Robinson brings to Friendship comes from a long lineage. There have...

Album: Slikback - Attrition

In the eternal now of the strobe-lit sweatbox, innovation functions in a different way to the rest of culture. Yes of course, the thrill of the...

Interview: Quinteto Astor Piazzolla on playing in London and...

“I still can’t believe that some pseudo-critics continue to accuse me of having murdered...

Sir Brian Clarke (1953-2025) - a personal tribute

Brian Clarke died on 1 July 2025, after a long illness. He was one of the most original British artists of our time – wide-ranging, ground-...