Nielsen, Wendy L.

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1999
WENDY NIELSEN
to be Doctor of Letters

Musical ability often runs in families although it can take several generations for a great musician to emerge. One can picture Wendy Nielsen's grandfather, Bertie, years before Wendy was born, taking enormous pleasure from a recital at the old Normal School auditorium in Fredericton. Music maintained his tie to the old country, he would say with a distinct Danish accent, and it was the mark of civility. One can equally picture Wendy's father, Paul, and her uncles performing in the Fredericton Music Festival, piano and violin, usually solo, but even more fun in duet.

And then came Wendy and the day local voice teacher Mabel Doak, scarcely able to restrain her joy, recognized the potential in her singing. Wendy had talent, but the gift of family and talent did not diminish by an iota the incredibly hard work that lay ahead. As Wendy discovered, a voice needs nurturing and cultivating; technique is not acquired through the genes, while colour, and projection, and dramatic intensity are only some of the many things to be learned and applied. When in the 1996/97 season, the great golden curtain of the Metropolitan Opera went up on her Fiordiligi in Mozart's Cosi fan tutte. Wendy Nielsen had arrived at the top, but it was her years of study, perseverance, and sheer hard work that carried her there. It was doubtless made easier by the support of a loving family, and the adulation of her many friends and fans here in central New Brunswick, but it was her own determination that brought her the ultimate success.

Wendy has a huge soprano voice: powerful, rich, exquisitely shaped to suit the genre or the composer. Equally at home with Mozart or Richard Strauss, she combines radiant singing with the nuance of a skilled actress. She carries the music to her listener, as if engaged in conversation, and conveys both the message of the music and the meaning of the words.

Wendy Nielsen received music degrees from the University of Lethbridge and the University of British Columbia. Since then she has sung with major orchestras all over North America, including Toronto and Montreal and more than a dozen in the United States, notably the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center. She has toured with the Canadian Opera Company and has appeared with the Edmonton, Minnesota, and Tulsa Opera companies, capped by her enthusiastically received debut in New York. She has enjoyed return engagements at the Metropolitan Opera every year since her debut. Her Mozart roles remain a strong niche, but she is equally at home with twentieth century composers such as Janacek, Britten, Mahler, Strauss, Ravel, and the challenging Penderecki. Wherever she has performed, she has done so to critical acclaim, and she has a suitcase full of prestigious awards marking her accomplishments.

But this remarkable internationally acclaimed artist is also very much a New Brunswicker. She is a loving wife and mother with a home in Cambridge Narrows, far from the glamour and bustle of the international concert stage. She sings for us regularly at the New Brunswick Summer Music Festival here on the UNB campus, and she calls on her friend and former teacher in Fredericton for pointers. Success has not spoiled Wendy Nielsen, nor has it diminished her perceived need to practise for hours every day, to learn foreign languages and refine her pronunciation, and to study new roles and pieces for future performance. There is no resting on one's laurels in this business.

It is our pleasure today to welcome Wendy Nielsen into the family of UNB graduates. Singer, actress, artist, and musical ambassador to the world's most prestigious opera stages and concert halls, she has made us proud of her accomplishments and won the highest accolades in her field. That she has also willingly shared her beautiful voice with us in the tiny setting of Memorial Hall gives us yet another reason, if any were needed, to claim her as our own.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 3