VoxCarnyx

Nicky Spence has swapped the hustle and bustle of London for quieter family life in a Renfrewshire manse, but the versatile Scots tenor is still in global demand. Coming up, the London Proms and Lammermuir Festival, and a promise to pick and choose. KEN WALTON reports  

At 43, Dumfriesshire-born tenor Nicky Spence has reached a point in his busy and successful career where he can call the shots. Not in an arrogant celeb-kinda way. Spence is unquestionably at the top of his tree, larger-than-life, cuts an ostentatious profile, and just as comfortable singing the noblest of Wagner in the world’s top opera houses as camping it up in popular music theatre. But in essence he’s a genuinely nice guy, enjoying family life with his pianist husband Dylan Perez, three-year-old son Baird and the assortment of pets that roam the former Paisley manse they now call home.

The recent move to Scotland was as much about work-life balance as Spence’s yearning to reconnect with the country of his birth. The time was right, he reckoned, to get out of London where he’d been for the past 25 years. “We wanted to find a big hunky building with some space to let animals and children roam free, idealogical images of my own childhood. We’d lived in Deptford which is quite gentrified but certainly still quite stabby, so we were quite happy to leave that behind and find somewhere where Baird will hopefully be reciting some Burns poetry.”

More importantly, it’s five minutes from Glasgow Airport, which means Spence’s international commitments remain perfectly viable in terms of juggling family life. “Opera companies are really family unfriendly so you often get your schedule at 7pm for the next day, then suddenly you might have a day off, so that’s when I can whizz home being so close to the airport.”

The move also opens up greater possibilities for Spence to throw some home gigs into the globetrotting mix. Take this month alone, where on Saturday (12 Sept) he’s starring in the Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, leading the nation (broadcast live on BBC television) in Rule Britannia. Fast forward seven days (19 Sept) and he’s on a rescue mission to East Lothian’s Lammermuir Festival, standing in for an indisposed Joshua Ellicott in Janacek’s dramatic song cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared. Moreover, it’s only a few weeks since Spence was at the Usher Hall starring in the Edinburgh International Festival’s performance of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s epic curiosity The Song of Hiawatha.

When we met at his home last week he’d just returned in the nick of time from a fitting for Saturday’s Proms. Are we to expect a dazzling extravaganza for that ritually outrageous Rule Britannia moment? “It’s pretty hush hush,” says Spence, who’s everyday attire leans invariably towards the colourful. “Many people have tried to wriggle information from me. I could give you an exclusive, but I won’t!” 

Saturday, he discloses, will involve five costume changes. “I was looking through the annals to see how previous singers have produced a flag in the past for Rule Britannia. It’s quite hard to come up with a novel idea. There are really only so many ways you can do it………..but we’ve come up with something!” 

As to his wider brief for the evening, which also features pianist Yuja Wang, Spence says it’s like a little celebration of the person chosen to sing. “So it’s going to be a bit cheeky – some of it anyway. In the first half I’m doing some very noble, operatic Czech [now revealed as the Prince’s Aria from Dvorak’s Rusalka]. But for the second half there might be some Scottish stuff – weird if there wasn’t – and maybe something dance-related as well.” 

Subsequent updates to the BBC Proms website confirm a newly commissioned Scotch Snap arranged by Stuart Calvert featuring “various artists”, and “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat” from Guys and Dolls. 

Where there’s capriciousness and mirth at the Last Night of the Proms, Spence’s Janacek in Haddington next week will demand (alongside mezzo soprano Victoria Simmonds and pianist Jeremy Denk) a performance soaked in theatrical intensity. It’s not a work that lies in the repertoire of many tenors, so the Festival (which began earlier this week and runs till Sunday 20 September) breathed a sigh of relief when they discovered that Spence knew, and had recorded, it and was available to step into the breach. “It’s something I’ve got in my back pocket, so I was really happy to do it,” he explains. 

The Diary of One Who Disappeared is about forbidden love, a subject painfully close to Janacek, tortured in later life through his unrequited passion for a much younger woman, Kamila Stösslová. “It falls between the stools of song cycle and opera,” Spence argues. It’s got a lot of shame and vulnerability about it. Maybe that’s why I like Czech music, especially Janacek. It’s almost this kind of judgment of the outside world, which I kind of recognise from growing up in Scotland”. Suddenly our window view of the Paisley church, to which Spence’s manse was once spiritually attached, looms large. “It’s my echo chamber,” he confirms. Spence experienced his own vulnerability, deserted by his father at an early age and brought up by a doting mother. 

In an operatic career that nearly never was – Spence embarked on a major, lucrative pop-classical crossover deal with Decca in his early twenties only to walk out mid-contract to return to serious opera studies – Janacek’s operas have proved a winner for him. “I’ve pretty much ticked all of them off apart from Osud,” says Spence. “I love that they’re not too operatic, but genuinely dramatic. There’s an economy, similar to Britten’s operas, that really appeals to me. I’d say to any first time opera goer, go see something like Jenufa rather than [Mozart’s] The Magic Flute, which is quite problematic in being bloody boring in the second half, all the trials and stuff, all the patriarchy shite.”

A busy schedule this season includes Janacek performances in Bamberg and at London’s Covent Garden. But what gives Spence the greatest satisfaction is that Czech directors keep calling him back. Later this autumn he’ll be in Brno to star in three Janacek productions: The Adventures of Mr Broucek, Jenufa and Sarka. “In the past I’ve even sung The Diary of One Who Disappeared in Hukvaldy where Janacek was born. So in that sense I’ve been selling ice to the eskimos.”

With Spence’s move to Scotland, however, there are clear signs he’ll be careful about what he says yes to in the pursuit of broader challenges. He recently pulled out of an engagement with Hamburg State Opera for the simple reason “I just wasn’t enjoying the ride”.

“I like to spread the joy wherever I’m going, but will probably try to be a bit more specific about it. I was president of the ISM [Independent Society of Musicians] where I learnt a lot about advocacy and governance, and that may come into play. I’d love to run a vocal department, equipping young singers with what they need to succeed. But mostly I’m keen to do more collaborating with people I really enjoy working with. It’s a daily challenge trying not to work with arseholes any more. There are still some conductors out there who act like they come from another century, That’s always interesting!”

There are, however, some operatic roles he has in his sights. “I’ve pretty much done the ones I wanted to, but I haven’t done Captain Vere in [Britten’s] Billy Budd and I think I’d make a really interesting Aschenbach in Death in Venice.” He also hopes to do more work with his husband Dylan, “if we can stop arguing about the dishwasher”. One 2027 date firmly in the duo’s diary is the May recital in Cumnock that traditionally launches the programme for that year’s Cumnock Tryst Festival. 

Given his own challenging childhood, what aspirations does Spence have for young Baird? “We just want him to be a happy human being. He’s so friendly, loves dancing, and we learn so much from him all the time – such a great ballast amid the stormy seas of performing. He gives us context.”

Nicky Spence stars in this weekend’s Last Night of the Proms, broadcast live on BBC One & Two on Saturday 12 September. Full details at www.bbc.co.uk/proms

The Lammermuir Festival runs till 20 September in East Lothian. Full details at www.lammermuirfestival.co.uk