fri 07/11/2025

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

theartsdesk in Bremen: 150 years of A German Requiem

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The Moderate Soprano, Duke of York's Theatre review - love and opera with a flinty edge

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Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Royal Opera review - bleak rigour and black comedy still cast a spell

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Robin Ticciati on conducting Brahms: 'trying to understand the man through his music'

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Bernstein's MASS, RFH review - polymorphousness in excelsis

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Coraline, Royal Opera, Barbican review - spooky story, underwhelming score

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Manon, Royal Ballet review - glitter and betray

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theartsdesk at the Lucerne Easter Festival: Haitink, Schiff and an alternative Passion

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Gerhardt, RPO, Payare, RFH review - personality muted by faceless conducting

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La traviata, English National Opera review - into a vortex of ineptitude

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Faust, LSO, Gardiner, Barbican review - Schumann as never before

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Hallenberg, LSO, Gardiner, Barbican review - palpitating Schumann and Berlioz

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From the House of the Dead, Royal Opera review - Janáček's prison oddity prompts hot tears

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Fanny and Alexander, Old Vic review - agile but shallow Bergman adaptation

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theartsdesk in Germany - Baltic mastery in Berlin and Leipzig

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Iolanthe, English National Opera review - bright and beautiful G&S for all

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Opening acts don’t always enjoy a full house, but at at the Royal Albert Hall at the end of a UK tour in support of Suzanne Vega and her acclaimed...

Train Dreams review - one man's odyssey into the Americ...

What defines a life? Money and success? Happiness? Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams employs a narrator, much as Terrence Malick’s...

Kali Malone and Drew McDowell generate 'Magnetism'...

It’s weird, right? We’ve somehow stumbled into a world where, for all we’re told that algorithms homogenise music, actually more people than ever...

Palestine 36 review - memories of a nation

“Rebellion begins with a breath,” an opening aphorism declares in this first film recounting Palestine’s 1936-39 Arab Revolt, long historically...

Relay review - the method man

Ash (Riz Ahmed) is one of cinema’s capable men, the kind of monastically devoted pro made to be a hitman or getaway driver. David Fincher’s ...

The Makropulos Case, Royal Opera - pointless feminist compli...

Janáček described his nature-versus-humanity fable The Cunning Little Vixen as “a merry thing with a sad...

Othello, Theatre Royal, Haymarket review - a surprising mix...

Perspectives on Shakespeare's tragedy have changed over the decades....

Benson Boone, O2 London review - sequins, spectacle and chee...

After cancelling his Birmingham gig an hour before curtain-up due to illness, the anticipatory hype around whether...