The Swedish Nightingale

Way out west in the United States, on the road between San Francisco and the El Dorado National Forest, is the old mining community, Jenny Lind, near New Lake Hogan. 450 miles north, a herd of musk oxen graze on Jenny Lind Island’s grassy meadows in Nunavut in Canada in the North Arctic Ocean. In another part of the world, smoke and steam billow forth out of a majestic Jenny Lind locomotive on a historic railway in England. But who was Jenny Lind, the Swedish nightingale?

In 1820, Johanna Maria Lind was born, one of the greatest ever Swedish stars. She was never called anything other than Jenny. It is difficult to really comprehend how idolized this young singer was. She was just 29 years old when she retired from the opera stage, having achieved tremendous international fame in the five years since she made her debut in Berlin in 1844. H.C. Andersen said of her that no one else had such a profound influence over him as a poet: “She opened the door to the sacred rooms of art for me.”

Jenny Lind was enrolled as a student at the Royal Opera when she was nine years old, five years younger than the minimum enrolment age. In her own words, she was “a small, ugly, timid, awkward little girl with a broad nose and stunted growth”. But she could sing like no other, and her debut as Agathe in Der Freischütz (The Marksman) at the age of 17 took the audience’s breath away. She had tremendous drive, a unique voice, amazing coloratura and a diminuendo that diminished into nothingness. She had an intense presence on stage as well as in life. But she also experienced stage fright before performances and could be curt and unkind to the people around her.

The year after her final opera performance, she embarked on a tour of America that left its mark on the world to the extent that her name is still recognized almost 200 years later. On her arrival in New York, she was met by 30,000 cheering people and disembarked to a cascade of flowers. The tour manager, the legendary entrepreneur P.T. Barnum, sold concert tickets by auction and the deeply religious Jenny Lind donated almost all of her unimaginable income to charity after the tour.

But what significance does Jenny Lind have for us today? Just a glimmering fantasy or a face on a banknote, or can she open the door to the sacred rooms of art even for us? Before the 200th anniversary of Jenny Lind’s birth in 2020, Sveriges Television and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra will explore her life and career in a drama documentary as well as in this concert with gems from her magnificent repertoire.

Text: Janna Vettergren