Lillian Nordica (December 12, 1857 – May 10, 1914) was an American opera singer who had a major stage career in Europe and her native country.

She had a powerful yet flexible voice and the ability to perform an unusually wide range of roles in the German, French and Italian operatic repertoires.

Lillian Allen Norton was born in 1857 in a small Cape Cod style farmhouse built by her grandfather on a hill in Farmington, Maine.

Convinced that she could forge a successful career as a professional performer, Norton travelled to Italy and put a final bel canto polish on her vocalism through study in Milan.

She achieved a high rank among the international prima donnas of her era, appearing in many major musical venues in Western Europe and Russia.

She sang for example at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1887–93 and performed at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany in 1894 as Elsa in Lohengrin.

In her native America, Nordica was particularly associated with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where her frequent stage partner was the cultured Polish tenor Jean de Reszke.

An adventurous artist, she embraced an enormously varied repertoire which included, among many other works, Aida, Wagner's Ring Cycle (as Brünnhilde), Tristan und Isolde, Lohengrin, La traviata, Il trovatore, La Gioconda, Faust, Les Huguenots, Mignon and Le nozze di Figaro.

Nordica established her worldwide reputation as an opera singer of the first magnitude, despite facing powerful competition during her career from a number of other outstanding dramatic sopranos.

Her main rivals included Lilli Lehmann, Rosa Sucher, Katharina Klafsky, Milka Ternina, Therese Malten, Johanna Gadski, Félia Litvinne, Olive Fremstad, Anna von Mildenburg and Emmy Destinn.

Nordica can be also heard briefly in some of the Mapleson Cylinders that were recorded during actual performances at the Metropolitan Opera House during the first few years of the 20th century.

[2] In 1882, she retired from the stage to marry Frederick A. Gower, whom she sued for divorce in 1885, but who disappeared at about the time of the suit, probably having been killed in a balloon accident.