LIND, JENNY the famous Swedish singer, was born at Stockholm on Oct. 6, 1820, the daughter of a lace manu facturer. Mlle. Lundberg, an opera-dancer, first discovered her musical gift, and induced the child's mother to have her educated for the stage ; during the six or seven years in which she was what was called an "actress pupil," she occasionally appeared on the stage, but in plays, not operas, until 1836, when she made a first attempt in an opera by A. F. Lindblad. She was regularly engaged at the opera-house in 1837. Her first great success was as Agathe, in Weber's Der Freischfitz, in 1838, and by 1841, when she started for Paris, she had already become identified with nearly all the parts in which she afterwards became famous. But her celebrity in Sweden was due in great part to her histrionic ability, and her wonderful vocal art was only attained after a year's hard study under Manuel Garcia.
Her first appearance in England was as Alice in Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable at His Majesty's Theatre (May 4, 1847). The furore she created was prodigious. She sang in several of her favourite characters, and in that of Susanna in Mozart's Figaro, besides creating the part of Amalia in Verdi's I Masnadieri„ written for England and performed on July 22. In the autumn she appeared in operas, in Manchester and Liverpool, and in concerts at many provincial centres. At Norwich began her acquaintance with the bishop, Edward Stanley (1779-1849), which was said to have led to her final determination to give up the stage as a career.
After four more appearances in Berlin, and a short visit to Stockholm, she appeared in London in the season of 1848, when she sang in Donizefti's L'Elisire d'amore and Bellini's I Puritani, in addition to her older parts. At the beginning of the season. of 1849 she intended to give up operatic singing, but a com promise was effected by which she was to sing the music of six operas, performed without action, at Her Majesty's Theatre; but the first, a concert performance of Mozart's Il Flauto magico, was so coldly received that she felt bound, for the sake of the manager and the public, to give five more regular representations, and her last performance on the stage was on May so, 1849, in Robert le Diable. In 1850, just before leaving for America, she sang the
soprano music in The Messiah at Liverpool with superb art. She remained in America for nearly two years, being for a great part of the time engaged by P. T. Barnum. In Boston, she married (1852) Otto Goldschmidt (1829-1907), whom she had met at Lubeck in 1850.
For some years after her return to England, her home for the rest of her life, she appeared in oratorios and concerts, and her dramatic instincts were as strongly and perhaps as advantageously displayed in these surroundings as they had been on the stage, for the grandeur of her conceptions in such things as the scene of the widow in Elijah and the religious fervour of "I know that my Re deemer liveth," could not have found a place in opera. In her later years she took an active interest in the Bach Choir, conducted by her husband, and not only sang herself in the chorus, but gave the benefit of her training to the ladies of the society. For some years she was professor of singing at the Royal College of Music. Her last public appearance was at DUsseldorf on Jan. 20, 187o, when she sang in Ruth, an oratorio composed by her husband.
She died at Malvern on Nov. 2, 1887. The supreme position which she held so long in the operatic world was due not only to the glory of her voice, and the complete musicianship which dis tinguished her above all her contemporaries, but also the naïve simplicity of her acting in her favourite parts, such as Amina, Alice or Agathe. In these and others she had the precious quality of conviction, and identified herself with the characters she repre sented with a thoroughness rare in her day. Unharmed by the perils of a stage career, she was a model of rectitude, generosity and straightforwardness, carrying the last quality into a certain blunt directness of manner that was sometimes rather startling.
See S. Dorph, Jenny Lindiana till hundrairsminnet (Uppsala, 1919) and Jenny Linds triumftag genom nya vdrlden och ovriga leonadsoden (Uppsala, 1918) ; J. T. H. Norlind, Jenny Lind; Scott Holland & W. S. Rockstro, Jenny Lind the Artist (London, 18q1; abridged, 1893).