Henriette Nissen-Saloman

Henriette Nissen-Saloman (née Nissen; 18 January 1819 – 27 August 1879), was a Swedish opera singer (mezzo-soprano) and singing teacher.

Her parents were eventually convinced by, among others, the Danish ballet master August Bournonville to allow their daughter to continue her music education.

That same year, Henriette Nissen toured Sweden and performed a concert with Jenny Lind who had yet to make her international breakthrough.

The concert was a success and the newspaper Freja put for the question of who was best, the internationally known Henriette Nissen, or the, as yet, little-known Swedish singer Jenny Lind.

She had roles in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena and Lucia di Lammermoor, female leads in Bellini’s I Puritani, Norma, La Sonnambula, Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable (Robert the Devil), Rossini’s Le siège de Corinthe (The Siege of Corinth) and the above named The Barber of Seville.

Henriette Nissen took part in several of the yearly Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig, singing, among others, Handel, Bach, Mozart and Spohr.

Her very solid works, Škola pěnija, L’étude du chant and Das Studium des Gesanges (1880), were given out posthumously, made print-ready by her husband in three languages.

Henriette Nissen-Saloman had a powerfully sounding mezzo-soprano voice in the lower registers, while the higher notes were thin with less colour.

In the final section she shows variations and ornamentations for the roles in opera scenes from Norma, Rosina, Amina, Cinderella and Lucia.