Opera Singer, Nicky Spence is one of Scotland’s proudest sons and his unique skills as a singing actor and the rare honesty of his musicianship have earned him a place at the top of the classical music profession.
Nicky was schooled locally in Dumfries and Galloway and received a scholarship to the Guildhall School as their youngest singer at 17 years old. During his training, he won a record contract with Decca Records before taking a place at the National Opera Studio and latterly a position at the English National Opera as one of their inaugural Harewood Artists.
Having made his Metropolitan Opera debut in New York before the age of 30 years old, Mr Spence is now safely inhabiting the repertoire of Strauss, Janáček and Wagner. Described in The Times this year as ‘a tenor who combines heroic tone and a poetic sensibility that takes the breath away’, he is fulfilling his exciting potential as a Heldentenor having recently made his role debut as Parsifal with the Hallé orchestra under Sir Mark Elder to great acclaim.
Early in his career, Nicky was nominated by the International Opera Awards for Young Singer of the Year and was also one of ten artists included in the Times Breakthrough Award at the South Bank Sky Arts Awards celebrating the best up and coming young British talent from across the Arts industry.
Having made strong debuts at his home companies of the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, English National Opera, and Scottish Opera, Nicky has gone on to appear regularly at L’Opéra national de Paris; Glyndebourne Festival Opera; Deutsche Staatsoper; La Monnaie, Brussels; Seattle Opera; The Metropolitan Opera, New York, Opéra national de Lyon; the Teatro Real in Madrid; the Dutch National Opera and Oper Frankfurt.
Nicky gives recitals prolifically, and appears in concert extensively having recorded over 20 recital discs while remaining a regular featured recitalist at the Wigmore Hall, London and other international stages across the world.
