fri 07/02/2025

David Nice

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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

Classical music/Opera direct to home: 2 - Boris Giltburg and Igor Levit

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Classical music/Opera direct to home: 1 - Budapest's Quarantine Soirées

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Simon Trpčeski, Barbican review - a charismatic chameleon

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

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

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

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Perhaps all great music counterpoints and comments on the times, but Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra have been searingly...

Bring Them Down review - ramming it home in the west of Irel...

“You know what they say: where there’s livestock, there’s dead stock,” says Jack (a brilliant Barry Keoghan). Never a truer word. There’s an awful...

Album: Rats on Rafts - Deep Below

Deep Below’s first track is titled “Hibernation.” “A winter breeze blows through my mind,” intones a colourless, dispirited male voice....

First Person: writer Lauren Mooney on bringing bodies togeth...

It started with a Guardian long-read. I’m ashamed to admit it since so many shows could say the same, but that was the beginning.

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The Marriage of Figaro, English National Opera review - long...

Who’s in and who’s not – on the secret, the joke, the relationship, the family, the club? That’s the fulcrum of Joe Hill-Gibbins’ ingeniously...

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Oedipus, Old Vic review - disappointing leads in a productio...

The opening scene of the Old Vic’s Oedipus is dominated by a giant backdrop of a skull-like face, eyes shut and rock-like. It...

Album: Hifi Sean & David McAlmont - Twilight

It was only six months ago that Hifi Sean and David McAlmont released their Daylight album. A fine disc of summery dance pop that was...