sun 03/08/2025

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

Der fliegende Holländer, Irish National Opera review - sailing to nowhere

Read more...

Die Zauberflöte, Royal Academy of Music review - first-rate youth makes for a moving experience

Read more...

Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whelan, St George’s Hanover Square review - Handel’s journey of a soul

Read more...

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Marsalis, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - sounds above substance

Read more...

Bavouzet, BBCSO, Stasevska, Barbican review - ardent souls in mythic magic

Read more...

Levit, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Fischer, RFH review - anger unleashed, fantasy finessed in Prokofiev

Read more...

A Form of Exile: Edward Said and Late Style, CLS, Wood, QEH review - baggy ferment of ideas and sounds

Read more...

Mansfield Park, Guildhall School review - fun when frothy, chugging in romantic entanglements

Read more...

Uprising, Glyndebourne review - didactic community opera superbly performed

Read more...

The Ferryman, Gaiety Theatre, Dublin review - Jez Butterworth's Northern Irish epic comes close to home

Read more...

Fledermaus, Irish National Opera review - sex, please, we're Viennese/American/Russian/Irish

Read more...

Light of Passage, Royal Ballet review - Crystal Pite’s cosmic triptych powers back

Read more...

Mary, Queen of Scots, English National Opera review - heroic effort for an overcooked history lesson

Read more...

MacMillan's Ordo Virtutum, BBC Singers, Jeannin, Milton Court review - dramatic journey of a medieval soul

Read more...

Festen, Royal Opera review - firing on every front

Read more...

Gilliver, Liverman, Rangwanasha, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - a rainbow of British music

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
theartsdesk at the Three Choirs Festival - Passion in the Ca...

“Powerful, Timeless, Inspiring” it says on the front cover of the programme-book for this year’s supposedly 297th Three Choirs Festival at...

Natalia Ginzburg: The City and the House review - a dying ar...

Many readers and writers think of epistolary novels as old-fashioned, just as letter writing itself can seem a bit quaint nowadays. The genre...

Album: Mansur Brown - Rihla

I like to think I’m open to most things, but even so I never thought that I’d be getting an education in prog metal in the summer of 2025. Let...

BBC Proms: Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Kaljuste rev...

Arvo Pärt was into his 40s before he made had his Big Musical Idea: simplicity. He has spent the subsequent half-century pursuing this ideal,...

Top Hat, Chichester Festival Theatre review - top spectacle...

After 76 years, you’d have thought they could’ve come up with a better story! Okay, that’s a cheap jibe and, given the elusive...

Late Shift review - life and death in an understaffed Swiss...

Floria (the superb Leonie Benesch: The Crown; The Teachers’ Lounge; September 5) is a nurse, working the severely understaffed...

Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews: Alright Sunshine / K Mak at t...

Alright Sunshine, Pleasance Dome ...

The Naked Gun review - farce, slapstick and crass stupidity

The original Naked Gun series (spun off from the Police Squad! TV show) brought reliable belly-laughs to the Eighties and...

Album: Reneé Rapp - Bite Me

The stage musical update of Mean Girls, and the film adaptation, pushed Reneé Rapp into the public eye. She played queen bitch Regina...