Alice Nielsen - Later Years

Later Years

Nielsen was a popular recording artist in sessions conducted by Arthur Pryor. She recorded seventy tracks between 1898–1928, most of the recordings made about 1910. Her big hit record was "Home, Sweet, Home", followed by "Un bel di", "Killarney" and "Last Rose of Summer." "I only sang the songs I wanted to sing", she stated in Colliers Magazine which published her autobiographic 1932 series Born To Sing.

After a brief return to Broadway in 1917's short-lived Belasco musical Kitty Darlin, with lyrics by P. G. Wodehouse, who was fired three weeks before the NY opening, Nielsen married surgeon Le Roy Stoddard and moved to Bedford, New York. By 1920, Nielsen's touring schedule was light. She last appeared with Boston Symphony in 1922. She sang with a reunited Alice Nielsen Company at the Victor Herbert memorial concert staged by ASCAP in 1925. In 1929 she divorced Stoddard. Nielsen continued singing occasional concerts until shortly before her death. In later years, she owned a house in Far Rockaway, Queens near her brother, who was the parish organist for St. Mary, Star of the Sea Church. Its cemetery is her final resting place.