Question: Who starred in the political-satirical opera "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" and was born in 1946?
Context: "The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre" is a theoretical work by the twentieth-century German theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht.  It was composed in 1930 as a set of notes to accompany his opera "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny".  In it, he outlines his ideas for a "refunctioning" of the theatre, his principle of the 'separation of the elements" (conceived in opposition to Wagner's principle of the "integrated work of art"), and the "shifts of accent" involved in the move from traditional "dramatic" theatre to his own "epic" theatre.  It also contains one of the earliest formulations of "Gestus". Michael Chioldi (born May 24, 1970) is an American operatic baritone who has performed at many major American opera houses and festivals, including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, San Diego Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Palm Beach Opera, Long Beach Opera, Minnesota Opera, Spoleto Festival USA, Arizona Opera, Utah Opera, New York City Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Chautauqua Opera, Kentucky Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Hawaii Opera Theatre, Santa Fe Concert Association, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Chicago Opera Theatre, Austin Lyric Opera, New Orleans Opera, Odyssey Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre and Vermont Opera Project. Inga Nielsen (2 June 1946 – 10 February 2008) was a Danish soprano who had an active international opera career from 1971 to 2006.  A child prodigy, Nielsen performed on American radio during the 1950s, beginning at the age of six, and also released some commercial recordings of Danish folk songs and Christmas carols as a child.  She began her opera career performing parts in the lyric soprano repertory and then became an admired singer of dramatic soprano roles, beginning in the late 1980s.  She was a particularly renowned interpreter of the roles of Konstanze in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" and the title role in Richard Strauss's "Salome".  She excelled in portraying some of the more rarely heard and demanding dramatic soprano roles such as the woman in Arnold Schoenberg's "Erwartung", Ursula in "Mathis der Maler" and Jenny in "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny". The Chicago Opera Company was a grand opera company in Chicago, organized from the remaining assets of the bankrupt Chicago City Opera Company, that produced six seasons of opera at the Civic Opera House from 1940 to 1946 (excluding 1943).  Artistic directors included Carlo Peroni (1941-1942) and Fausto Cleva (1944-1946), and until 1945 Fortune Gallo was general manager.  After the war, when consumer goods became more abundant and people spent less money on entertainment, interest in opera collapsed and the company went bankrupt.  Rather than try to re-organize, the remaining assets were given to the largest creditor, the landlord of the Civic Opera House, Household finance, who then paid off the other remaining creditors.  After the final collapse of an opera company that had been re-organized five times, there was no resident Chicago opera company until the founding of the Lyric Opera in 1954.  One of the original group of organizers was Max Rabinoff. Mahagonny-Songspiel, also known as The Little Mahagonny, is a "small-scale 'scenic cantata'" written by the composer Kurt Weill and the dramatist Bertolt Brecht in 1927.  Weill was commissioned in the spring to write one of a series of very short operas for performance that summer, and he chose to use the opportunity to create a "stylistic exercise" as preparation for a larger-scale project that they had begun to develop together (the two had met for the first time in March), their experimental 'epic opera' "The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" (1930). Maria Tudor is an opera in four acts composed by Antônio Carlos Gomes to an Italian-language libretto by Emilio Praga (completed by Arrigo Boito).  The libretto is based on Victor Hugo's 1833 play "Marie Tudor", which centers on the rise, fall and execution of Fabiano Fabiani, a fictional favourite of Mary I of England.  The opera premiered on 27 March 1879 at La Scala, Milan with Anna D'Angeri in the title role and Francesco Tamagno as Fabiani.  The opera was a failure at its premiere and withdrawn, a heavy blow to Gomes who was in serious financial and family difficulties at the time.  He returned to his native Brazil the following year. Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (German: Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny ) is a political-satirical opera composed by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht.  It was first performed on 9 March 1930 at the Neues Theater in Leipzig. The "Alabama Song"—also known as "Moon of Alabama", "Moon over Alabama", and "Whisky Bar"—is an English version of a song written by Bertolt Brecht and translated from German by his close collaborator Elisabeth Hauptmann in 1925 and set to music by Kurt Weill for the 1927 play "Little Mahagonny".  It was reused for the 1930 opera "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" and has been notably covered by The Doors and David Bowie. Tim Halperin (born May 27, 1987, in Omaha, Nebraska) is an American singer-songwriter.  A piano player and vocalist, in 2007 he began performing and recording, and in 2010 his track "We Fight Back" became the theme song for Susan G. Komen for the Cure.  He was a Top 24 "American Idol" contestant for season 10, and afterwards released his 2011 debut album, "Rise and Fall", which peaked at no. 14 on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart.  The EP "Under that Christmas Spell" followed in 2012, and like all his albums since "Rise and Fall" was released on 24 Hour Distribution.  Halperin's second album "Heart Tells Your Head" was released in February 2014 and peaked at No. 21 on the Heatseekers chart. Marcus Samuel Blitzstein (March 2, 1905January 22, 1964), was an American composer, lyricist, and librettist.  He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical "The Cradle Will Rock", directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration.  He is known for "The Cradle Will Rock" and for his Off-Broadway translation/adaptation of "The Threepenny Opera" by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.  His works also include the opera "Regina", an adaptation of Lillian Hellman's play "The Little Foxes"; the Broadway musical "Juno", based on Seán O'Casey's play "Juno and the Paycock"; and "No for an Answer".  He completed translation/adaptations of Brecht's and Weill's musical play "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" and of Brecht's play "Mother Courage and Her Children" with music by Paul Dessau.  Blitzstein also composed music for films, such as "Surf and Seaweed" (1931) and "The Spanish Earth" (1937), and he contributed two songs to the original 1960 production of Hellman's play "Toys in the Attic".
Answer: Inga Nielsen