NickySpence

Press

• Janáček - Jenůfa - Royal Ballet and Opera

  Royal Ballet and Opera

  Jan 2025

  • Nicky Spence’s inclusion as a Janáček tenor is starting to become an inevitability and it’s clear to see why. Playing Laca, Spence was impressive from his first line to his last. Maintaining a comfortable volume while still packing a beautiful tone and peerless stage work, Spence’s Czech diction and meticulous word placement is inimitable.

    • London Unattached
    • 16 January 2025

  • Nicky Spence is a tower of vocal strength as Laca...

    • Financial Times
    • 16 January 2025

  • Nicky Spence’s Laca finds potent consolation in his narrative redemption, rakish bravado blossoming into stern maturity as eventual Jenůfa’s lover, robust vocals helming his ossifying physicality.

    • Broadway World
    • 16 January 2025

  • Spence’s giant of a voice gives full vent to Laca’s volatile fervour...

    • Bachtrack
    • 17 January 2025

  • Nicky Spence adopted the physique of Laca with a swagger always accenting his pride. Lamenting Jenůfa’s indifference to him in “Mne jste si nevsimly a já byl třeba také sirota” (“You didn’t notice me; I may as well have been an orphan”), Spence sustained well-governed notes combining arrogance and longing. When Laca comforted a newly childless Jenůfa and offered, “Nepodáš mi ruky?” (“Won’t you give me your hand?”), the tenor kept a thick vibrato resonant of headstrong ego.

    • OperaWire
    • 18 January 2025

  • Nicky Spence was a wonderfully expansive Laca, his all encompassing tone make you understand the way he could support Jenůfa at the end, his jealousy and impulsiveness all part and parcel. Spence made Laca more personable, more approachable than some, but it is important to remember that this is an opera where all the protagonists are damaged in some way, and the tentative nature of Jenůfa and Laca's relationship in Act Three brought this out, with Spence treating Winters as if she might shatter.

    • Planet Hugill
    • 03 February 2025

  • Nicky Spence, as Laca, brought newfound authority and vocal power to a role he sang when this staging was new. His portrayal balanced the character’s simmering jealousy with moments of profound vulnerability, making his eventual reconciliation with Jenůfa all the more moving.

    • Music OMH
    • 15 January 2025

  • ...Nicky Spence’s superbly sung Laca...

    • The Times
    • 16 January 2025

• Oxford International Song Festival Recital with Julius Drake

  Oxford International Song Festival

  Oct 2024

  • The finale, on Saturday at SJE Arts, opened with Gabriel Fauré’s La bonne chanson, settings of poems by Paul Verlaine for voice, piano and string quintet. Spence, joined by Julius Drake (piano), the Piatti Quartet and Leon Bosch (double bass), revelled in the delicate, impressionistic textures of the nine songs, so adored by Marcel Proust, though others thought the whole cycle, and its odd instrumentation, mad. On the night we would turn our clocks back, Spence gave particular zest to the last song, L’hiver a cessé (Winter Is Over), full of dreams of long days and blue skies. In the second half of the recital, with Drake game and willing on piano, the Scottish tenor displayed his unstoppable and expansive energy, adaptability and wit, from Ravel and Poulenc to John Dankworth, Victoria Wood and Stephen Sondheim. When he sang Richard Strauss – Zueignung and Cäcilie – he reminded us of his gifts for the long phrase, and for powerful expression, in whichever language. Tom Lehrer’s Masochism Tango had Spence rotating and boogying across the stage, bristling and masterful. In the midst of all came Noël Coward’s Any Little Fish. Only Nicky Spence could persuade a self-respecting Oxford audience to buzz, quack, woof, moo and coo along. It was over too soon.

    • The Guardian
    • 02 November 2024

• Elgar - Dream of Gerontius

  CD

  Apr 2024

  • Nicky Spence is outstanding as Gerontius… [he] gives one of the finest performances of Gerontius on disc. ... one of the finest interpretations of the title role that I’ve heard on disc.

    • John Quinn, MusicWeb International
    • 09 April 2024

  • Only Nicky Spence as Gerontius, both touchingly introspective and fiercely dramatic when required, hints at that extra dimension, establishing him as one of the finest interpreters of the role around today,

    • Andrew Clements, The Guardian
    • 19 April 2024

  • Nicky Spence, who sings the role of Gerontius, delivers Elgar’s flexible operatic declamation with real authority and, at least for me, rivals Richard Lewis’s ageless interpretation under Barbirolli.

    • Jeremy Dibble, Gramophone
    • 19 April 2024

• Janáček - Jenůfa - Barbican

  LSO - Sir Simon Rattle - Barbican

  Jan 2024 - Jan 2024

  • ...Nicky Spence, swaggering on in a leather biker jacket, sang stylishly and brought heaps of character to no-good Steva, activating the honey in his tone as he turned on the charm.

    • The Guardian
    • 12 January 2024

  • The LSO’s concert operas are primarily stand-and-deliver affairs, but the savvy Scottish tenor Nicky Spence hugely bucked up the theatre in this show: ostentatiously narcissistic as Jenufa’s lover Steva and later magnificently repentant.

    • The Times
    • 12 January 2024

  • Nicky Spence has sung both roles, but he certainly has the arrogant and weak Števa down to the most telling small gesture; of the varying levels of acting-out, his was the most outwardly impressive

    • The Arts Desk
    • 12 January 2024

• Wagner - Das Rhinegold

  La Monnaie, Brussels

  Oct 2023 - Nov 2023

  • Dans le rôle de Loge, demi-dieu du feu, Nicky Spence fait étonnamment écho avec sa dernière interprétation de Pape à La Monnaie dans Le Nez de Chostakovitch. Tout aussi théâtral et facétieux, le ténor détonne parmi la distribution. Précis, versatile et sans aucune difficulté apparente, il dessine son personnage avec une prosodie et une présence très rafraîchissante.

    • Olyrix
    • 25 October 2023

  • e Loge puissant, incisif et manipulateur de Nicky Spence, aussi bon comédien que chanteur, est ici le grand ordonnateur de l’intrigue.

    • Bachtrack
    • 26 October 2023

  • ...dal tenore scozzese Nicky Spence, entrambi pure al debutto nel ruolo. Spence, una delle più belle voci in scena, in particolare, è perfetto per il ruolo del furbo semidio Loge che risolve il pasticcio creato da Wotan aiutandolo a prendere l’oro.

    • Giornale della Musica
    • 24 October 2023

  • Joué et bien sûr chanté. Car du côté vocal, la qualité des chanteurs – beaucoup d’habitués de la maison – achève de sceller la réussite de la soirée. À défaut de pouvoir tous les citer, on épinglera dans le rôle central de Loge le ténor écossais Nicky Spence, sournois magistral. Même score à l’applaudimètre pour le baryton américain Scott Hendricks, qui se glisse dans la peau du nain Alberich avec une véracité diabolique jusqu’à sa lugubre déconfiture. Houspillant Wotan, son calculateur de mari, la déesse Fricka s’impose grâce au mezzo et à la vigueur habituelle de Marie-Nicole Lemieux. La paire de géants Fasolt (Ante Jerkunica) et Fafner (Wilhelm Schwinghammer) ont les graves et la carrure parfaites en Dupont-Dupond wagnériens de la cupidité. Et toute la distribution est à l’avenant, juste, engagée, captivante. On la retrouve dès janvier dans "Die Walküre". Patience…

    • l'Echo
    • 25 October 2023

  • De onbetwiste ster op het podium is tenor Nicky Spence. In de rol van vuurgod Loge, een personage dat nergens echt de actie draagt, maar op slinkse wijze telkens weer betrokken blijkt, bewijst de roldebutant waarom die ietwat aparte casting een schot in de roos is. Spence zet een intrigerende, speels-lichtvoetige vertolking neer waarmee hij enige relativering in het gewichtige verhaal brengt. De staande ovatie is terecht. De cast is indrukwekkend, de omkadering minstens evenwaardig en boven­al: de voorstelling doet verlangen naar het vervolg. Als de komende delen van eenzelfde kwaliteit zijn, kunnen we alleen maar concluderen dat de Munt met deze cyclus goud in handen heeft.

    • De Standaard
    • 25 October 2023

  • Vor allem Ante Jerkunica als Fasolt ist ein körperliches Ereignis und neben Scott Hendricks und Nicky Spence, als Loge ein fröhlicher Unterhalter des Publikums, der einzige, der stimmlich voll überzeugen kann

    • Süddeutsche Zeitung
    • 25 October 2023

• Beethoven Symphony No. 9

  BBC Proms 2023, BBC Symphony Orchestra/Ryan Wigglesworth

  Jul 2023

  • The bass Michael Mofidian launched Schiller’s Ode with terrific bravado, answered by the ebullient tenor of Nicky Spence

    • The Telegraph
    • 30 July 2023

  • The quartet of soloists — Eleanor Dennis, Karen Cargill, Nicky Spence, Michael Mofidian, every one born in Scotland — pitched in with vigour, eloquence and passion of their own

    • The Times
    • 24 July 2023

  • …all four members of the solo vocal quartet were excellent [….] The pairs of voices worked well, too – when Nicky Spence’s tenor and Mofidian’s bass-baritone sit against Eleanor Dennis’s soprano and Karen Cargill’s mezzo, the effect was wonderful.

    • Seen and Heard
    • 26 July 2023

• Messiaen - Saint François d’Assise

  City Halls Glasgow / BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

  Apr 2023

  • The two soloists, Scots tenor Nicky Spence and bass-baritone Ashley Riches, proved a solid, complementary and emotive pairing

    • Vox Carnyx
    • 15 April 2023

• Mahler Revelge from 'Das Knaben Wunderhorn' and Beethoven Symphony No. 9

  Royal Festival Hall

  Mar 2023

  • The tenor Spence, strong and caustic, was particularly striking in Revelge, simulating march steps with tiny shakes of his body.

    • The Times
    • 23 March 2023