Born in Greece, Nicholas Georgiadis graduated from the Slade School of Fine Arts in London, where he later became a professor of set design. He created his first sets in 1955 for Kenneth MacMillan's Danses concertantes, and went on to collaborate with the choreographer on a regular basis. From 1957 onwards, he designed theatre and opera sets for stages in London, Athens and Frankfurt. From 1964, he collaborated with Rudolf Nureyev, designing the sets and costumes for Swan Lake (at the Vienna Opera), The Nutcracker (at the Royal Ballet in London, then at La Scala in Milan and the Berlin Opera), Sleeping Beauty (at La Scala in Milan and for the National Ballet of Canada, then for the London Festival Ballet), Raymonda (at the Zurich Opera and the American Ballet Theatre), Don Quixote for the Operas of Vienna, Milan, Berlin, Zurich, the Royal Ballet of London, the National Ballet of Canada, the London Festival Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre. He worked on Michel Cacoyannis's film Les Troyennes (1971) and reconstructed the sets and costumes by Bakst, Benois and Röhrich for Herbert Ross's film Nijinsky (1979). In 1982 he received the Evening Standard Ballet Award, the first time this had been awarded to a set designer. In 1989, he was made a Commander of the British Empire. At the Opéra national de Paris, he designed the sets and costumes for Rudolf Nureyev's productions of Don Quixote (1981), Raymonda (1983), The Nutcracker (1985), Sleeping Beauty (1989), the costumes for Washington Square (1985), and those for L'Histoire de Manon (MacMillan), which entered the repertory in 1990. He died in 2001.