Jenny Lind

Johanna Maria "Jenny" Lind, also known as Madame Goldschmidt, was born on 6 October 1820 and died on 2 November 1887. A Swedish opera singer, she earned the nickname "Swedish Nightingale" and was considered one of the most admired singers of the 1800s. She performed soprano roles in opera across Sweden and Europe, and in 1850 she began a highly successful concert tour of the United States. In 1840, she became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

Lind first gained widespread fame in 1838 after performing the role of Agathe in Der Freischütz at the Royal Swedish Opera. Not long after, she damaged her voice, but the teacher Manuel García helped her recover it. During the 1840s, she was in high demand for opera roles in Sweden and northern Europe, and she had a close association with the composer Felix Mendelssohn. After two well-received seasons in London, she retired from opera at age 29.

American tour

In 1850, Lind traveled to the United States at the invitation of showman P. T. Barnum. She performed 93 large-scale concerts for him and later continued touring under her own management. She earned over $350,000 from these concerts, which she donated to charity, mainly to fund free schools in Sweden.

She returned to Europe in 1852 with her new husband, Otto Goldschmidt, and settled in England in 1855. She had three children and gave occasional concerts over the next thirty years. Starting in 1882, she taught singing at the Royal College of Music in London for several years.

Early life

Lind was born in Klara, central Stockholm, the illegitimate daughter of bookkeeper Niclas Jonas Lind and schoolteacher Anne-Marie Fellborg. Her mother had divorced her first husband for adultery but waited until his death in 1834 to remarry; Lind’s parents married when she was 14. Her mother ran a day school for girls at home. When Lind was about nine, her singing was overheard by the maid of Mademoiselle Lundberg, a principal dancer at the Royal Swedish Opera.

The maid returned with Lundberg, who arranged an audition and helped Lind enter the Royal Dramatic Training Academy, where she studied with singing master Carl Magnus Craelius. She began performing onstage at age ten. At twelve, she had a vocal crisis and stopped singing for a time, but recovered.

Her first major role was Agathe in Weber’s Der Freischütz in 1838. By age twenty, she was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and a court singer to the King of Sweden and Norway. Her voice was seriously damaged by overuse and poor technique, but Manuel García saved her career. She studied with him in Paris from 1841 to 1843, and he insisted she not sing at all for three months to let her vocal cords heal before teaching her a healthy bel canto technique.

After a year with García, composer Giacomo Meyerbeer arranged an audition for her at the Paris Opéra, but she was rejected. Biographer Francis Rogers suggests she resented this deeply; as an international star, she always refused invitations to sing there. She returned to the Royal Swedish Opera much improved. In 1843, while touring Denmark, Hans Christian Andersen met and fell in love with her.

They became good friends, but she did not return his feelings. She is thought to have inspired three of his fairy tales: "Beneath the Pillar," "The Angel," and "The Nightingale." Andersen wrote that no book or person had influenced him as a poet more than Jenny Lind. Biographer Carol Rosen believes that after Lind rejected Andersen, he portrayed her as the Snow Queen with a heart of ice.

German and British success

In December 1844, through Meyerbeer’s influence, Lind was hired to sing the title role in Bellini’s Norma in Berlin. This led to more engagements across Germany and Austria, and she stayed in Berlin for four months before moving on. Early admirers included Robert Schumann, Hector Berlioz, and especially Felix Mendelssohn.

Ignaz Moscheles wrote that Lind enchanted him, calling her song with two concertante flutes an incredible feat of bravura singing. That number, from Meyerbeer’s Ein Feldlager in Schlesien, became one of her signature pieces. Her operatic repertoire included 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. According to Lindsay B. Yeates, while the beauty of her voice was unmatched, what truly set her apart was her outstanding acting ability.

In December 1845, the day after her debut at the Leipzig Gewandhaus under Mendelssohn, she sang for free at a charity concert for the Orchestra Widows’ Fund. Her devotion to charitable causes remained a key part of her career and boosted her international popularity. At the Royal Swedish Opera, she was friends with tenor Julius Günther, and they sang together in opera and concerts, becoming romantically involved.