Nicholas Georgiadis

Nicholas Georgiadis was born in Athens, Greece and studied at the National Metsovian University before winning a Fulbright scholarship in 1952 to study at Columbia University, New York. The following year he moved to London to study stage design at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he later became a lecturer.

His designs for ballet included MacMillan’s Danses Concertantes, House of Birds, Noctambules, Agon, The Burrow, The Invitation, Las Hermanas, Song of the Earth, Manon, Mayerling, Orpheus (for The Royal Ballet), Swan Lake (for the Berlin Opera House); Nureyev’s  production of The Nutcracker and The Tempest (for The Royal Ballet and the Paris Opera Ballet), Swan Lake (Vienna State Opera House), The Sleeping Beauty (La Scala, Milan, National Ballet of Canada, Vienna State Opera and London Festival Ballet), Raymonda (American Ballet Theatre, Zurich Opera House and Paris Opera Ballet), Manfred (Zurich Opera House), Don Quixote (Zurich, Berlin and Paris Opera Houses, and International Ballet Festival, Boston); and Lynn Seymour’s Intimate Lovers (Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet).

Georgiadis’s designs for Orpheus and The Tempest won him the London Evening Standard Ballet Award for the most outstanding achievement in 1982.  His designs for opera included Aida and The Trojans (The Royal Opera); Medea (Frankfurt Opera House); Anna Bolena (Athens Opera House) and Don Giovanni (Athens Festival).  His designs for plays include Lysistrata (Royal Count), Montherlant’s La Reine Morte (Oxford Playhouse), Julius Caesar (Old Vic), Anthony and Cleopatra (Prospect Theatre Company), All for Love (Prospect), Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (Haymarket); and his costume designs for films include Euripides’s The Trojan Woman, and the reconstruction of the Ballets Russes designs for Nijinksy.

Georgiadis received the C.B.E. at the 1984 Birthday Honours in June and was admitted to the Greek Academy of Arts in 2000.  He died in March, 2001 at the age of 77.