Thérèse Carolina Johanne Alexandra Tietjens (17 July 1831,érè Hamburg3 October 1877, London) was a leading opera and oratorio soprano. She made her career chiefly in London during the 1860s and 1870s, but her sequence of musical triumphs in the British capital was terminated by cancer.
During her prime, her powerful yet agile voice was said to span seamlessly a range of three octaves. Many opera historians consider her to have been the finest dramatic soprano of the second half of the 19th century.
Hamburg, Vienna, Frankfurt
She was of German birth but, according to some sources, Hungarian extraction. Tietjens received her vocal training in Hamburg and in Vienna. She studied with Heinrich Proch, who was also the teacher of Mme Peschka-Leutner and other prime donne. She made a successful debut at Hamburg in 1849 as Lucrezia Borgia in Donizetti's opera, a work with which she was particularly associated all her professional life. She sang in Frankfurt from 1850 to 1856 and in Vienna from 1856–1859.
London (1858–1864) Tietjens made her first appearance in London in 1858, as Valentine in Les Huguenots. 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.
She was equally fine in oratorio, and became a leading dramatic soprano in England, during the 1860s and early 1870s on both stage and platform. 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.
At this time the soprano Giulia Grisi was still singing in London: Tietjens was to inherit parts of Grisi's London repertoire and of that of Giuditta Pasta. In 1860, Edward Tyrrel Smith, manager of Her Majesty's, attempted to seize the market in both English and Italian opera by having two companies alternating. The Italian opera began with Il trovatore, with Tietjens, Mme Lemaire, Giuglini and the baritone Vialetti, and the team then progressed to Don Giovanni, while the English opera premiered George Alexander Macfarren's Robin Hood with Sims Reeves. 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.
In her ideal role as Lucrezia, Tietjens led the cast at the London debut of Zelia Trebelli (singing Orsini) in 1862. In that year Herman Klein, aged 15, saw her in Les Huguenots and, 40 years later, described his realisation then, that she was a tragedienne of the highest order. Moreover, his teacher had described her delivery of Handel's "I know that my Redeemer liveth" to him in terms of wonder. On 14 July 1862 at the 50th Jubilee concert for the Philharmonic Society, she sang the Mendelssohn Loreley (with choir) and "With joy the impatient husbandman" from Haydn's The Seasons. 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.
The year 1863 saw the first performance of Gounod's Faust in England, at London's Her Majesty's Theatre, with Tietjens as Marguerite, Giuglini (as Faust), Charles Santley (as Valentin), Edouard Gassier (as Mephistopheles) and Trebelli (as Siebel). This production was transferred to the theatre at Covent Garden and was performed in every successive season until 1911. In the same season Tietjens created the role of Selvaggia in Niccolo de' Lapi by (conductor at Drury Lane), also with Trebelli, Giuglini and Santley (Niccolo). (This work was revived with far greater success as Selvaggia in Milan 1875.) There was more Il trovatore, a Norma (one of Tietjens's finest roles) with Désirée Artôt (making her debut that year also as Violetta and Marie) (mezzo) as Adalgisa, and Weber's Oberon with Sims Reeves (Huon), Marietta Alboni (Fatima), Trebelli (Puck), the tenor Alessandro Bettini (Oberon), Gassier (Babekan) and Santley (Scherasmin). That autumn she went with the Mapleson tour to Dublin to appear in Faust with Reeves, Trebelli and Santley, and for herself also made a tour in Paris. In 1867 he was a soloist in the premiere of the Sacred Cantata Woman of Samaria by William Sterndale Bennett at the 1867 Birmingham Music Festival conducted by the composer.