One of the UK’s favourite tenors will take the stage tonightpublished at 18:45 BST
18:45 BST
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Image source, Getty Images
Born and raised in Dumfries, Scotland, Nicky Spence has
emerged as one of the UK’s favourite tenors.
Trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Nicky
won a recording contract in his final year and released his debut album My
First Love in 2007.
After touring with Katherine Jenkins and Dame Shirley
Bassey, he turned his back on a commercial recording career and returned to
Guildhall for a specialist opera course.
Upon graduating, he joined the English National Opera, where
he created the key character Brian in Nico Muhly’s Two Boys – a prescient 2011
opera about the effect online relationships and chartrooms were having on young
men.
Ever since, his international career has flourished. In
2022, he was named BBC Musician Magazine’s personality of the year.
But his approach to music has changed since Spence and his
husband, pianist Dylan Perez, became parents two years ago.
“Fatherhood made me rethink everything – including how I
hear and sing,” he recently told Gramophone Magazine.
No stranger to the Proms, he’s back the Royal Albert Hall
just a couple of weeks after playing title role in Carl Maria von Weber’s
rarely performed opera Oberon.
Asked whether he’d wear a kilt and sporran for the Last
Night, Spence was circumspect.
“That would be telling,” he told The Times. “Let’s just say
people may see a bit of leg.”