49 Facts About Jenny Lind

Johanna Maria Lind was a Swedish opera singer, often called the "Swedish Nightingale".

Jenny Lind was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music from 1840.

Jenny Lind became famous after her performance in Der Freischutz in Sweden in 1838.

Jenny Lind was in great demand in opera roles throughout Sweden and northern Europe during the 1840s, and was closely associated with Felix Mendelssohn.

Jenny Lind gave 93 large-scale concerts for him and then continued to tour under her own management.

Jenny Lind earned more than $350,000 from these concerts, donating the proceeds to charities, principally the endowment of free schools in Sweden.

Jenny Lind's mother had divorced her first husband for adultery but refused to remarry until after his death in 1834.

Jenny Lind's mother ran a day school for girls out of her home.

When Jenny Lind was about 9, her singing was overheard by the maid of Mademoiselle Lundberg, the principal dancer at the Royal Swedish Opera.

Jenny Lind had a vocal crisis at the age of 12 and had to stop singing for a time, but she recovered.

Jenny Lind's voice became seriously damaged by overuse and untrained singing technique, but her career was saved by the singing teacher Manuel Garcia with whom she studied in Paris from 1841 to 1843.

Jenny Lind insisted that she should not sing at all for three months, to allow her vocal cords to recover, before he started to teach her a healthy and secure Bel canto vocal technique.

The biographer Francis Rogers concludes that Jenny Lind strongly resented the rebuff: when she became an international star, she always refused invitations to sing at the Paris Opera.

Jenny Lind returned to the Royal Swedish Opera, greatly improved as a singer by Garcia's training.

Jenny Lind toured Denmark where, in 1843, Hans Christian Andersen met and fell in love with her.

In December 1844, through Meyerbeer's influence, Jenny Lind was engaged to sing the title role in Bellini's opera Norma in Berlin.

At the Royal Swedish Opera, Jenny Lind had been friends with the tenor Julius Gunther.

In July 1847, Jenny Lind starred in the world premiere of Verdi's opera I masnadieri at Her Majesty's Theatre, under the baton of the composer.

In early 1849, still in her twenties, Jenny Lind announced her permanent retirement from opera.

In 2013, George Biddlecombe confirmed in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association that "The Committee of the Mendelssohn Scholarship Foundation possesses material indicating that Mendelssohn wrote passionate love letters to Jenny Lind entreating her to join him in an adulterous relationship and threatening suicide as a means of exerting pressure upon her, and that these letters were destroyed on being discovered after her death".

Jenny Lind's talent was unlimited, turned round and looked at me, as if a load of anxiety had been taken off his mind.

Jenny Lind composed the soprano aria in his oratorio Elijah with Lind's voice in mind, focusing the tessitura of the aria around F-sharp, a note in her range that Mendelssohn supposedly found irresistibly charming.

Jenny Lind did not at first feel able to sing the soprano part in Elijah, which he had written for her.

The original intention had been to found a school of music in Mendelssohn's name in Leipzig, but there was not enough support there, and with the help of Sir George Smart, Julius Benedict and others, Jenny Lind eventually raised enough money to fund a scholarship "to receive pupils of all nations and promote their musical training".

The first recipient of the Mendelssohn Scholarship was the 14-year-old Arthur Sullivan, whom Jenny Lind encouraged in his career.

Together with a supporting baritone, Giovanni Belletti, and her London colleague, Julius Benedict, as pianist, arranger and conductor, Jenny Lind sailed to America in September 1850.

Jenny Lind continued the tour for nearly a year, under her own management, until May 1852.

Benedict left the party in 1851 to return to England, and Jenny Lind invited Otto Goldschmidt to replace him as pianist and conductor.

Jenny Lind used the name "Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt" both privately and professionally.

Details of the later concerts under her own management are scarce, but it is known that under Barnum's management Jenny Lind gave 93 concerts in the United States for which she earned about $350,000, and he netted at least $500,000.

Jenny Lind donated her profits to various charities, including free schools in Sweden and some US charities.

When Goldschmidt formed the Bach Choir in 1875, Jenny Lind trained the soprano choristers for the first English performance of Bach's B minor Mass in April 1876, and performed in the mass.

Jenny Lind's concerts decreased in frequency until she retired from singing in 1883.

From 1879 until 1887, Jenny Lind worked with Frederick Niecks on his biography of Frederic Chopin.

Jenny Lind believed in an all-round musical training for her pupils, insisting that, in addition to their vocal studies, they were instructed in solfege, piano, harmony, diction, deportment and at least one foreign language.

Jenny Lind's students included German singer and composer Georgina Schubert.

In 1868, Jenny Lind wrote that a singer's vowels must be rich in quality to form a sensation of "speak singing".

Jenny Lind stated that the different registers of the voice were unique to each individual and that each register needed to be trained individually and tailored to the specific singer's ability.

Jenny Lind lived her final years at Wynds Point, Herefordshire, on the Malvern Hills near the British Camp.

Jenny Lind died of cancer at age 67 at Wynds Point on 2 November 1887, and was buried in the Great Malvern Cemetery to the music of Chopin's Funeral March.

Jenny Lind bequeathed a considerable part of her wealth to help poor Protestant students in Sweden receive an education.

Jenny Lind is believed to have made an early phonograph recording for Thomas Edison, but in the words of the critic Philip L Miller, "Even had the fabled Edison cylinder survived, it would have been too primitive, and she too long retired, to tell us much".

Jenny Lind felt that her concert singing was more admirable than her operatic performances, but he praised some of her roles.

Jenny Lind has been commemorated in music, on screen and even on banknotes.

In 2005, Elvis Costello announced that he was writing an opera about Jenny Lind, called The Secret Arias with some lyrics by Andersen.

The town of Jenny Lind, California is likely named after her, although there are several tales about its naming.

Jenny Lind visited Mammoth Cave in central Kentucky in 1851, and a feature in the cave was named in her honor, called "Jenny Lind's Armchair".

The Jenny Lind Wing is part of a student residence building at Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, which was founded by the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Augustana Synod in North America in 1860.

The American Swedish Historical Museum's Jenny Lind Room is devoted to her and the lasting effects of her widespread popularity in America.