SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Inga Nielsen Remembered: An appreciation by Göran Forsling (GF)


The Danish soprano Inga Nielsen died last Sunday in a hospital in Copenhagen aged 61. She had been suffering from cancer but was still singing in public in 2006 and made a recording for Danish Radio in April 2007.

She was born in Holbaek, Denmark on 2 June 1946 to an Austrian mother and a Danish father. Due to her father’s teaching post in Iowa the family spent several years there during her early youth. It was through her father that she developed an early interest in music and as early as at the age of six she sang in radio shows and made her recording debut aged nine.

Her musical training was carried through in Vienna, Stuttgart and Budapest and she also got guidance from the legendary Viennese soprano Hilde Güden. At the outset of her professional career, which lasted 35 years, she was a lyric soprano, singing not least Mozart but also Lucia di Lammermoor and Violetta in La traviata which were also great roles for her. Step by step she essayed heavier roles and during the last decade she was in great demand as a dramatic soprano, this part of her career triggered by a sensational Salome in 1994.  Die Kaiserin in Die Frau ohne Schatten and Chrysotemis in Elektra followed from intelligent coaching.

She was in demand all over the world, both as an opera singer and as a recitalist. She engaged in modern music and Hans Werner Henze composed the title role of his opera The English Cat with her voice in mind. She appeared in Mathis der Maler and Schönberg’s Erwartung, sang the soprano part in Wolfgang Rihm’s 3^rd symphony at the world premiere and appeared at the German premiere of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre.

Inga Nielsen was for a period married to American baritone Robert Hale. She had no children. Her demise is a great loss to the musical world but luckily her art is preserved on a number of recordings. A personal favourite is Beethoven’s Fidelio (Naxos), a role I also saw her in at the Vienna State Opera, and on DVD she can be seen as Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail from Covent Garden in the late 1980s. As recently as November 2007m Chandos, in collaboration with Danish Radio, released a 2-CD set with mainly recordings from the radio archives. There she can be heard in many of her best operatic roles as well as in her recital repertoire. As bonus tracks we get two songs from her debut record, aged 9, and an even earlier private recording when she was 6. The discs were issued to celebrate 35 years as a professional singer and she contributes her own charming liner notes. The discs now become a worthy tribute to the memory of one of the most versatile of vocal artists, who was carried off far too early.
 
 Göran Forsling


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