JENNY LIND
SOPRANO
OCTOBER 6TH, 1820

Coined the ‘Swedish Nightingale’, Jenny Lind was born in Stockholm in 1820. Her exceptional voice was noticed at age ten, and as even as a young girl she was enrolled in the Royal Opera School in Stockholm. In 1838 she made her debut at Agathe in Der Freischütz. Early demands and success overtaxed her voice and this led her to travel to Paris to seek consultation and tutelage from Manuel García the younger, who immediately prescribed some time of vocal rest before taking her on as a student. In 1842 upon returning to Stockholm her much improved voice was apparent when she appeared in the title role of Norma.

When touring Denmark, in 1843, she met the writer Hans Christian Andersen who fell in love with her. The two became good friends but his romantic feelings were not reciprocated.  She is believed to have inspired three of his fairy tales: “Beneath the Pillar”, “The Angel” and “The Nightingale“ and possibly the “Snow Queen”, after what was perceived as an icy rejection from Lind. He wrote, “No book or personality whatever has exerted a more ennobling influence on me, as a poet, than Jenny Lind. For me she opened the sanctuary of art.”^[1]

Among her early admirers were Robert Schumann, Hector Berlioz and, most importantly for her, Felix Mendelssohn. The pianist and composer, Ignaz Moscheleswrote: “Jenny Lind has fairly enchanted me… her song with two concertante flutes is perhaps the most incredible feat in the way of bravura singing that can possibly be heard”.^[2]

The character of Vielka, from Meyerbeer’s Ein Feldlager in Schlesien (The Camp of Silesia) 1844, was a role specifically written for Lind but not premiered by her. Nevertheless the Gypsy Song from the opera became one of the arias most associated with Lind, and she was called on to sing it wherever she performed in concert. Her operatic repertoire included the title roles in Lucia di Lammermoor, Maria di Rohan,Norma, La sonnambula and La vestale as well as Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro, Adina in L’elisir d’amore and Alice in Robert le diable.^[3]

Mendelssohn who was greatly enamoured with Lind wrote the soprano part of the Oratorio Elijah with her voice in mind, apparently giving great attention to the tessitura of the aria around the note F-sharp (F#5), which was a note in her range that Mendelssohn supposedly found irresistibly charming.^[4]    Devastated by Mendelssohn’s early death, Lind felt unable to perform the piece at its premiere.

Her fame had spread and when she arrived in England, she took the English audiences by storm. Queen Victoria herself attended all sixteen of Lind’s premiere performances. ^[5]

Of her performances at Her Majesty’s in London it was written by the reviewer in The Sun, on 5 May 1847, ‘So highly had Jenny Lind’s musical powers been praised, that we went almost prepared to be disappointed. We expected to find her a second Sontag from the descriptions we had read, but we certainly were not prepared to find, as we did find, the beautiful tones of a Sontag, united to the powers of a Grisi, the compass of a Malibran, the more than flexibility of a Persiani, and the correctness of intonation of the most perfect of musical instruments. It is impossible by language to convey any idea of what the voice of Jenny Lind really is, because it is so surpassingly beautiful – so superior to any other voice, uniting, as it does, the perfection of all voices, that there is no standard to which it can be compared. It is, in fact, itself the standard, as being the nearest approach to perfection of any voice ever heard, and hence the difficulty, nay, the absolute impossibility of doing justice by description to the powers of Jenny Lind. Truly has she been called the nightingale, for she possesses in the utmost perfection the “jug” note of the bird, and also that marvellous power of throwing, as it were, the warble into the distance – now dying away, and now swelling again, even as an organ does – a power possessed by no other human voice that we have ever heard.’^[6]

In 1849 after performing at two successful seasons at Her Majesty’s in London and an extensive tour of Great Britain she gave her final performance at Her Majesty’s and from the retired from the opera stage. 

A next chapter was to open with a collaboration in America with the entrepreneur and showman B.T. Barnum of ‘Barnum and Bailey’s Circus’. Before her arrival, Barnum had managed to whip up a fever by an immense publicity campaign, which resulted in what was known in the press as, Lindomania. The eight months of concert tours were a huge success, and by the end of the New York engagement, the Lind concerts had generated some $87,055.89, which would be over three million dollars in today’s money. The total receipts for the concerts amounted to $712,161.43, being in 2020 the equivalent of $24.5 million.

Lind commanded a guaranteed fee $1,000.00 per performance. Later, as a result of Lind tiring of Barnum’s relentless promotion, she invoked a clause in her contract to terminate the agreement and continued to tour under her own management.

Her devotion and generosity to charitable causes remained a key aspect of her career and greatly enhanced her international popularity, even among the unmusical, as she chose to give most of it away to charities she loved—primarily music scholarships and private schools. Some of the recipients were in the United States and the rest were mostly in England and Sweden.^[7]

During the American tour she met her husband, pianist and conductor, Otto Goldschmidt. In 1852 they returned to Europe where they initially lived in Dresden Germany. It was in Dresden that her first child was born. Later, in England, two other children were born to Jenny and Otto. She refused requests to return to the opera stage but continued to give concerts.

The critic H. F. Chorley, who admired Lind, described her voice as having “two octaves in compass – from D to D – having a higher possible note or two, available on rare occasions; and that the lower half of the register and the upper one were of two distinct qualities. The former was not strong – veiled, if not husky; and apt to be out of tune. The latter was rich, brilliant and powerful – finest in its highest portions.”

In 1883, at the request of the Prince of Wales, “she accepted the post of first Professor of Singing in the Royal College of Music”. ^[8]

She believed in an all-round musical training for her pupils, insisting that, in addition to their vocal studies, they were instructed in solfège, piano, harmony, diction, deportment and at least one foreign language.^{[9] [10]}

Among the numerous recognitions of her remarkable career and vocal art still visible more than 130 years since she died in 1887; there are streets named for Jenny Lind in a dozen or more American cities – but two towns bear her name as well: Jenny Lind, Arkansas and Jenny Lind, California! Her name is honoured at Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, and her image adorned the Swedish 50-krona banknote. Another interesting fact is an Australian schooner was named Jenny Lind in her honour. In 1857, it was wrecked in a creek on the Queensland coast; the creek was accordingly named Jenny Lind Creek.^[11]