| Biography | Flora Nielsen was born Sybil Crawley on Vancouver Island on August 28, 1900, and studied at the Royal College of Music in London and at Vienna. She sang under her own name for a season at Monte Carlo, before joining the Sadler's Wells Company with whom she appeared in Lawrance Collingwood's Macbeth in 1934. / After becoming a mezzo-soprano, she sang, for the only time, at Covent Garden in 1938, as Brangaene, but her most important operatic work was done immediately after the war with the newly-formed English Opera Group. She shared the role of Female Chorus with Joan Cross in the first performances of The Rape of Lucretia (in which she was also a notable Bianca) at Glyndbourne in 1946, and she created the role of the Grand Duchess of Monteblanco in Berkelev's The Dinner Engagement in 1954. Her performance was described at the time in Opera magazine as "magnificent". / She was also a fine Lieder singer, as her few records indicate. Elena Gerhardt encouraged her to develop her talents in this field, and she had already given several recitals in Germany before the war. During it she appeared frequently at the National Gallery concerts. After it, she appeared on the concert platform in London, Paris, and Holland. Her gifts as an interpreter were appreciable, particularly in the songs of Schubert, Schumann and Wold, while being far from negligible in the English repertory. / Her voice was a warm, flexible adn expressive mezzo, well focused if not of great power. After she retired, she devoted herself energetically to teaching, both privately and at the Royal Academy of Music.
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