(PARA PAR@ ` αTEXT ` ╥Nielsen, Alice1870?╨1943singerBorn in Nashville, Tennessee, on June 7 probably in 1870 (some sources give 1868 or 1876), Alice Nielsen grew up in Warrensburg and then Kansas City, Missouri. She was educated in parochial schools and from an early age sang in the streets for pennies. She later sang in a church choir and received some voice instruction from a local teacher. About 1886 she had the opportunity to sing in a touring juvenile production of The Mikado. Her marriage to Benjamin Nentwig, a church organist, in 1889 was short-lived. In 1892 she and three other singers formed the ╥Chicago Church Choir Company,╙ and after an unsuccessful tour through Missouri and a stint at the Eden MusÄe in St. Joseph, Missouri, with that group, she joined the Burton Stanley traveling opera company. In Oakland, California, she appeared as Yum-Yum in the Stanley production of The Mikado in 1893. In 1894, after a period at the Wigwam, a San Francisco music hall, she joined the Tivoli Opera Company, with whom she made her grand operatic debut in Lucia di Lammermoor. In 1896 Nielsen obtained an audition with the manager of the Bostonians, the nation╒s leading light opera company, which was then touring California. She won a position with the company and gradually worked her way up from understudy and ingenue roles to the female lead in Reginald De Koven╒s Robin Hood. She was chosen by Victor Herbert╒s wife to sing the lead in his The Serenade, which premiered in Cleveland in February 1897 and opened in New York City the next month. Her success in that operetta induced her to leave the Bostonians and to form the Alice Nielsen Comic Opera Company. Her greatest successes with her own company were Herbert╒s The Fortune Teller, in which she opened in Toronto in September 1898 and in New York later in the month, and his The Singing Girl, which she took from Montreal to New York in October 1899. In 1901 Nielsen took The Fortune Teller to London, and during its successful run there she was encouraged by the impresario Henry Russell to study for grand opera. Financed by an English patroness, she studied in Rome for two years and made her debut in December 1903 at the Bellini Theatre, Naples, in Faust (according to most sources, although she herself later remembered it as La Traviata). After an engagement at the San Carlo Theatre, Naples, she made her London debut in the spring of 1904 in a Covent Garden presentation of Don Giovanni. Subsequently she sang in Le Nozze di Figaro, La BohÅme, and Rigoletto there, and in 1905, under Russell╒s management, she sang Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Don Pasquale, at the New Waldorf Theatre. Under Sam and Lee Shubert she toured the United States in Don Pasquale, beginning with a New York debut in November 1905. A second American tour, with the San Carlo Opera Company, occupied 1907╨1908. In 1909 Nielsen joined the Boston Opera Company, with which she remained for five years, during which she sang in the American premiere of Debussy╒s L╒Enfant Prodigue, in November 1910 and the world premiere of Frederick S. Converse╒s The Sacrifice in March 1911. During that period she also sang occasionally with the Metropolitan Opera Company. She returned to light opera in the autumn of 1917 in Rudolf Friml╒s Kitty Darlin╒ at the Casino, New York City. Her last appearances were a series of concert recitals with the Boston Symphony Orchestra between 1921 and 1923. She then lived in retirement in New York City until her death there on March 8, 1943. styl ` 4 ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ " !I ╠ !I ╓ !I t !I ~ !I !I 3 !I 7 5¬ 8 !I _ !I i !I ¼ !I ╕ !I ┼ !I ╫ !I 6 !I F !I ä 5¬ à !I Ü !I ¼ !I ╡ !I ║ !I !I !I ¢ !I º !I ├ !I ╒ !I ╫ !I α !I µ !I ∩ !I
