[1] England thereafter became her home, and she continued to sing opera regularly at Her Majesty's Theatre, the Drury Lane and Covent Garden until her untimely death in 1877.

The early part of her London career coincided with the heyday of the tenor Antonio Giuglini (1827–1865), a student of Cellini, who made his debut at Her Majesty's in 1857 as Fernando in La Favorita.

In July 1859, Tietjens created the first London Elena in Les vêpres siciliennes of Verdi (four years after the original Paris production) at Drury Lane, opposite Giuglini's Arrigo.

On 15 June 1861, Tietjens was the first London Amelia, opposite Giuglini's Riccardo, and the Renato of Enrico Delle Sedie (a singer of great style, musicianship and talent but limited vocal range) in the original Lyceum Un ballo in maschera for Mapleson.

This was at St James's Hall Piccadilly, conducted by William Sterndale Bennett: other soloists were the baritone Charles Santley, soprano Jenny Lind, violinist Joseph Joachim, pianist Lucy Anderson and the cellist Carlo Alfredo Piatti.

On 5 July 1864 Titiens created Mireille (opposite Giuglini's Vincent) in the first production in England of Gounod's opera, which in its original five-act form had been premiered in Paris in March.

His replacement (Santley thought, an improvement) was Italo Gardoni, who had created the tenor role in I masnadieri in 1847 in London with Jenny Lind and Luigi Lablache.

In 1866, she assisted at the unsuccessful return of Giulia Grisi in Norma and Don Giovanni: her own appearances were however very successful, not least as Iphigenie in Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, with Gardoni (Pilade), Santley (Oreste) and Gassier (Thoas).

The same season saw her Elvira in an Ernani revival with Tasca, Gassier and Santley, and an Il Seraglio with Mme Sinico, and Messrs Gunz, a new tenor Rokitanski, and the Irish bass Signor Foli.

In 1867, the tenor Pietro Mongini took the role of Alvaro opposite Santley's Vargas and Tietjens's Leonora in the first England La forza del destino (Verdi) on 22 June, with Gassier as Fra Melitone.

In the following year, when there was an attempt to form a union of the Her Majesty's and Covent Garden companies, the Italian season opened with Norma, Tietjens in the title role, with Sinico, Mongini and Foli.

However, Lucrezia had remained a staple of her repertoire throughout the 1860s, and in May 1872 she again led a cast, on this occasion at Drury Lane, for the London debut of the tenor Italo Campanini (as Gennaro), with Trebelli as Orsino and the French baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure as Alfonso, under the baton of Sir Michael Costa.

Until 1872, she and "Madame Rudersdorff" had been the joint 'queens' of the English oratorio platform, but in that year her friend and rival left to continue her career in the United States.

In 1876, however, she visited North America, among other things performing the part of Lucrezia Borgia at the Astor Opera House in New York City opposite the tenor Pasquale Brignoli.

By this stage, she had become a sort of British institution, and under Sir Michael Costa she sang many performances of Handel's Messiah and Mendelssohn's Elijah—both works dear to the taste of London concert-goers.

She was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery "in the presence of a vast crowd, amid tokens of public grief such as no foreign artist before her had ever been vouchsafed on English soil."

Among her achievements, she had introduced London to Gounod's Faust and Mireille, Verdi's Un ballo in maschera, Les vêpres siciliennes and La forza del destino, and Nicolai's Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor,[1] while maintaining for almost 20 years a repertoire that also embraced Oberon, Der Freischütz, Fidelio, Médée, Die Zauberflöte, Il Seraglio, The Marriage of Figaro and, of course, her signature part of Lucrezia Borgia — and many other roles as well.

"[citation needed] Michael Scott suggests that Emma Albani attempted, unsuccessfully, to 'inherit the mantle' of Tietjens, but that Lillian Nordica and Lilli Lehmann (both of whom can be heard on recordings made in the early 1900s) were more natural successors to her vocal tradition.