tue 29/04/2025

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

Le nozze di Figaro, Garsington Opera review - fine-tuned telling it as it is

Read more...

Nardus Williams, Elizabeth Kenny, Spitalfields Music Festival review - layers behind a sweet Tower hour

Read more...

Bartlett, Fantasia Orchestra, Fetherstonhaugh, Proms at St Jude's review - Americana both fun and fierce

Read more...

Giulio Cesare, Glyndebourne review - every number a winner from dazzling revival cast

Read more...

theartsdesk at Smetanova Litomyšl - three fascinating operas and a masterpiece superbly vindicated

Read more...

theartsdesk at the 2024 Aldeburgh Festival - romantic journeys, cosmic hallucinations and wild stomps

Read more...

Abel Selaocoe / Dermot Dunne & Martin Tourish, Dublin International Chamber Music Festival - genius transfigures genius

Read more...

Giulio Cesare, Blackwater Valley Opera Festival review - characterful, lustrous Handel on parade

Read more...

Murrihy, Martineau, Wigmore Hall review - poise, transformation and rainbow colours

Read more...

Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2024 review - curator Steven Isserlis spotlights masterly Fauré and Saint-Saëns

Read more...

Jerry’s Girls, Menier Chocolate Factory review - just a parade that passes by

Read more...

Carmen, Glyndebourne review - total musical fusion

Read more...

Gomyo, National Symphony Orchestra, Kuokman, National Concert Hall, Dublin review - painful brilliance around a heart of darkness

Read more...

L'Olimpiade, Irish National Opera review - Vivaldi's long-distance run sustained by perfect teamwork

Read more...

Guildhall School Gold Medal 2024, Barbican review - quirky-wonderful programme ending in an award

Read more...

Götterdämmerung, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review - outside looking and listening in, always with fascination

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

Dealer's Choice, Donmar Warehouse review - fresh take o...

Patrick Marber’s powerful debut about gambling men is 30 years old, born as the Eighties entrepreneurial boom was starting to sour but...

Much Ado About Nothing, RSC, Stratford - Messina FC scores o...

Fragile egos abound. An older person (usually a man) has to bring the best out of the stars, but mustn’t neglect the team ethic....

Zsuzsanna Gahse: Mountainish review - seeking refuge

Mountainish by Zsuzsanna Gahse is a collection of 515 notes, each contributing to an expansive kaleidoscope of mountain encounters....

DVD/Blu-ray: All We Imagine as Light

All We Imagine as Light focuses on the lives of three women in contemporary...

Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Isata Kanneh-Mason, Wigmore Hall review...

I came to Isata and Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s Wigmore Hall recital on Saturday armed with a certain degree of scepticism. Not about the siblings’...

Simon Boccanegra, Opera North review - ‘dramatic staging’ pr...

Opera North have recently pioneered a way of presenting some big works which they call “dramatic concert stagings”, performing in concert halls as...

Mahler 8, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - lights on high

Transcendence is everywhere in Mahler’s most ambitious symphony, from the flaming opening hymn to the upper reaches in the epic setting of Goethe’...

Album: Car Seat Headrest - The Scholars

Following a tradition that reaches back to the The Who’s Tommy, bands and musicians with serious artistic ambition have created rock...

Music Reissues Weekly: The Hamburg Repertoire

The blurb on the front of the double-CD set The Hamburg Repertoire says it collects “The original recordings of songs...