It has been a lot of years since anyone heard Jenny Lind's voice, does her life and her sound really matter all these years later. Some people find her story fascinating.
News about Jenny Lind and her life and the mysteries associated with it are updated here and with the group Icons of Europe, link to their site below.
One group For Alltid Svensk (that's us) will update her info in November --we are always interested to learn more of her story and the other group is the organization
Icons of Europe http://www.iconsofeurope.com/ which serves the wonderful purpose of researching and teaching us more.
Link to their site for books and more!
" I have brightness in my soul, which strains toward heaven, I am like a bird!" Jenny Lind
I came across this wonderful story while driving home late one night with the dial set to public radio: Link to Nate DiMeo for his beautifully recited tale about the Swedish singer who performed before the time of recorded sound. She came to America with an offer from P.T. Barnum and performed, leaving little but legends about her singing.
http://www.thestory.org/stories/2013-10/lost-voice
http://www.thestory.org/stories/2013-10/lost-voice
The Composer and the Nightingale
125 years: Time to revive Jenny Lind's legacy!
The 125th anniversary of Jenny Lind's death in Malvern was commemorated on 2. November 2012 by the Mayor of Malvern(Worcestershire) and Malvern Civic Society. Malvern Civic Society sees an opportunity to revive and celebrate the legacy of the Swedish Nightingale as a source of inspiration and recognition for many people and institutions around the world. Additional information:
CHOPIN about Jenny Lind (19 August 1848):
"We did not leave the piano from nine till one in the night".
The 125th anniversary of Jenny Lind's death in Malvern was commemorated on 2. November 2012 by the Mayor of Malvern(Worcestershire) and Malvern Civic Society. Malvern Civic Society sees an opportunity to revive and celebrate the legacy of the Swedish Nightingale as a source of inspiration and recognition for many people and institutions around the world. Additional information:
CHOPIN about Jenny Lind (19 August 1848):
"We did not leave the piano from nine till one in the night".
Jenny / Fredrika Bremer
"Jenny Lind is actually on her way to America! A terrific welcome awaits her; she will be lucky if she escapes with her life!" The fame of her beneficence and her fine disposition, still more than that of her powers as a singer, have opened all hearts to and all arms to her, and an angel from heaven is not so perfect as people imagine Jenny Lind to be, and would not be half so welcome." So wrote Fredrika Bremer in a letter from Brooklyn, August 23, 1850. On September 24, she wrote again from Chicago:
"Jenny Lind is in New York and has been received with American furor---the maddest of all madness. the sale by auction of the tickets for her first concert is said to have made forty thousand dollars. She has presented the whole of her share of profit from that first concert to benevolent institutions of New York. Three hundred ladies are said to besiege her daily , and thousands of people of all classes follow her steps. Hundreds of letters are sent to her each day. Ah! poor girl! Hercules himself would not be equal to that." and in this way it happened that two of Sweden's greatest daughters were on American soil at the same time. Fredrika Bremer had been in America a year and had already seen whatever was th most worthwhile in the northern states west of Chicago. She was the foremost novelist of Sweden and, like Jenny Lind, her fame had preceded her to this country, where all well-informed Americans had welcomed Mary Howitt's translations of her work.
"Jenny Lind is in New York and has been received with American furor---the maddest of all madness. the sale by auction of the tickets for her first concert is said to have made forty thousand dollars. She has presented the whole of her share of profit from that first concert to benevolent institutions of New York. Three hundred ladies are said to besiege her daily , and thousands of people of all classes follow her steps. Hundreds of letters are sent to her each day. Ah! poor girl! Hercules himself would not be equal to that." and in this way it happened that two of Sweden's greatest daughters were on American soil at the same time. Fredrika Bremer had been in America a year and had already seen whatever was th most worthwhile in the northern states west of Chicago. She was the foremost novelist of Sweden and, like Jenny Lind, her fame had preceded her to this country, where all well-informed Americans had welcomed Mary Howitt's translations of her work.
The Nightingale
"Nattergalen" was published in Denmark in 1843. Hans Christian Anderson wrote the story "The Nightingale" as a tribute to Jenny Lind who did not return his love for her. Andersen met Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind (1820–1887) in 1840, and experienced an unrequited love for the singer. Lind preferred a platonic relationship with Andersen, and wrote him in 1844, "God bless and protect my brother is the sincere wish of his affectionate sister." Andersen wrote in The True Story of My Life, published in 1847, "Through Jenny Lind I first became sensible of the holiness of Art. Through her I learned that one must forget one's self in the service of the Supreme. No books, no men, have had a more ennobling influence upon me as a poet than Jenny Lind".Andersen's "The Nightingale" is generally considered a tribute to her. "The Nightingale" made Jenny Lind known as The Swedish Nightingale well before she became an international superstar and wealthy philanthropist in Europe and the United States. Strangely enough, the nightingale story became a reality for Jenny Lind in 1848-1849, when she fell in love with the Polish composer Fryderyk Chopin (1810–1849). His letters reveal that he felt "better" when she sang for him, and Jenny Lind arranged a concert in London to raise funds for a tuberculosis hospital. With the knowledge of Queen Victoria, Jenny Lind attempted unsuccessfully to marry Chopin in Paris in May 1849. Soon after, she had to flee the cholera epidemic, but returned to Paris shortly before he died of tuberculosis on 17 October 1849. Jenny Lind devoted the rest of her life to enshrining Chopin's legacy. Lind never recovered. She wrote to Andersen on 23 November 1871 from Florence: "I would have been happy to die for this my first and last, deepest, purest love."
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Fredrika & JennyFredrika Bremer, the Swedish writer and early feminist , met Jenny Lind in Cuba after one of her performances. They talked of many things among them love and marriage and Fredrika assured Jenny that age and religion were not a barrier if she was truly in love. Shortly thereafter, Jenny and Otto Goldschmidt, her young Jewish pianist, were married in Boston in 1852.
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Barnum and Jenny
Barnum, Jenny Lind, and the Press
We perceive in several exchange papers, attacks upon the New York press in reference to the Jenny Lind excitement; and the Herald, as usual, comes in for the principal share of abuse. It is more than insinuated that "black mail" has been levied, and that the articles about the Swedish Nightingale have been paid for. This must certainly be all very rich to Barnum, who, behind the scenes, enjoys the joke, and pockets his $5,000 net each concert, $15,000 per week, $780,000, or more than three quarters of a million, per annum, while the papers receive nothing but vituperation for their services, except, indeed, a few free tickets given grudgingly, and very often to the worst part of the house.
We perceive in several exchange papers, attacks upon the New York press in reference to the Jenny Lind excitement; and the Herald, as usual, comes in for the principal share of abuse. It is more than insinuated that "black mail" has been levied, and that the articles about the Swedish Nightingale have been paid for. This must certainly be all very rich to Barnum, who, behind the scenes, enjoys the joke, and pockets his $5,000 net each concert, $15,000 per week, $780,000, or more than three quarters of a million, per annum, while the papers receive nothing but vituperation for their services, except, indeed, a few free tickets given grudgingly, and very often to the worst part of the house.
Jenny In America
P.T. Barnum brought Jenny Lind to America on September 11, 1850.
When the “Swedish Nightingale,” opera star Jenny Lind, sailed into New York Harbor in 1850 the city went crazy. A massive crowd of more than 30,000 New Yorkers greeted her ship. And what makes that especially astounding is that no one in America had ever heard her voice.Who could make so many people so excited about someone they had never seen and never heard? Only the great showman, the Prince of Humbug himself,
Phineas T. Barnum.
The American showman Phineas T. Barnum, who operated an extremely popular museum in New York City and was known for exhibiting the diminutive superstar General Tom Thumb, heard about Jenny Lind and sent a representative to make an offer to bring her to America.
Jenny Lind drove a hard bargain with Barnum, demanding that he deposit the equivalent of nearly $200,000 in a London bank as an advance payment before she would sail to America. Barnum had to borrow the money, but he arranged for her to come to New York and embark on a concert tour of the United States.
Barnum, of course, was taking a considerable risk. In the days before recorded sound, people in America, including Barnum himself, had not even heard Jenny Lind sing. But Barnum knew her reputation for thrilling crowds, and set to work making Americans excited.Lind had acquired a new nickname, “The Swedish Nightingale,” and Barnum made sure that Americans heard about her. Rather than promote her as a serious musical talent, Barnum made it sound like Jenny Lind was some mystical being blessed with a heavenly voice.
Jenny Lind sailed from Liverpool, England, in August 1850 aboard the steamship Atlantic. As the steamer entered New York harbor, signal flags let
crowds know that Jenny Lind was arriving. Barnum approached in a small boat, boarded the steamship, and met his star for the first time.
As the Atlantic approached its dock at the foot of Canal Street massive crowds began to gather. According to a book published in 1851, Jenny Lind in
America, “some thirty or forty thousand people must have must have been collected together on the adjacent piers and shipping, as well as on all the
roofs and in all the windows fronting the water.”
The New York police had to push back the enormous crowds so Barnum and Jenny Lind could take a carriage to her hotel, the Irving House on Broadway. As night fell a parade of New York fire companies, carrying torches, escorted a group of local musicians who played serenades to Jenny Lind. Journalists estimated the crowd that night as more than 20,000 revelers.Barnum had succeeded in drawing enormous crowds to Jenny Lind before she had even sung a single note in America.
The most cherished gift which Jenny took home with her from America was a patchwork quilt with a floral pattern made by the blind children in an orphanage where she had given a concert for the children. She had allowed them to crowd around her afterward and run their hands over her body so they could "see her". For thirty-five years she kept the quilt on her bed and it was there when she died in November 1887. It was buried with her along with a shawl given to her by Queen Victoria.
When the “Swedish Nightingale,” opera star Jenny Lind, sailed into New York Harbor in 1850 the city went crazy. A massive crowd of more than 30,000 New Yorkers greeted her ship. And what makes that especially astounding is that no one in America had ever heard her voice.Who could make so many people so excited about someone they had never seen and never heard? Only the great showman, the Prince of Humbug himself,
Phineas T. Barnum.
The American showman Phineas T. Barnum, who operated an extremely popular museum in New York City and was known for exhibiting the diminutive superstar General Tom Thumb, heard about Jenny Lind and sent a representative to make an offer to bring her to America.
Jenny Lind drove a hard bargain with Barnum, demanding that he deposit the equivalent of nearly $200,000 in a London bank as an advance payment before she would sail to America. Barnum had to borrow the money, but he arranged for her to come to New York and embark on a concert tour of the United States.
Barnum, of course, was taking a considerable risk. In the days before recorded sound, people in America, including Barnum himself, had not even heard Jenny Lind sing. But Barnum knew her reputation for thrilling crowds, and set to work making Americans excited.Lind had acquired a new nickname, “The Swedish Nightingale,” and Barnum made sure that Americans heard about her. Rather than promote her as a serious musical talent, Barnum made it sound like Jenny Lind was some mystical being blessed with a heavenly voice.
Jenny Lind sailed from Liverpool, England, in August 1850 aboard the steamship Atlantic. As the steamer entered New York harbor, signal flags let
crowds know that Jenny Lind was arriving. Barnum approached in a small boat, boarded the steamship, and met his star for the first time.
As the Atlantic approached its dock at the foot of Canal Street massive crowds began to gather. According to a book published in 1851, Jenny Lind in
America, “some thirty or forty thousand people must have must have been collected together on the adjacent piers and shipping, as well as on all the
roofs and in all the windows fronting the water.”
The New York police had to push back the enormous crowds so Barnum and Jenny Lind could take a carriage to her hotel, the Irving House on Broadway. As night fell a parade of New York fire companies, carrying torches, escorted a group of local musicians who played serenades to Jenny Lind. Journalists estimated the crowd that night as more than 20,000 revelers.Barnum had succeeded in drawing enormous crowds to Jenny Lind before she had even sung a single note in America.
The most cherished gift which Jenny took home with her from America was a patchwork quilt with a floral pattern made by the blind children in an orphanage where she had given a concert for the children. She had allowed them to crowd around her afterward and run their hands over her body so they could "see her". For thirty-five years she kept the quilt on her bed and it was there when she died in November 1887. It was buried with her along with a shawl given to her by Queen Victoria.
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About her Voice
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Chopin and Jenny Lind
This is a fascinating documentary about Frédéric Chopin's life and the women behind his music that I would like to share with our member. (BBC)
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