Biography

Johanna Maria Lind (1820-87), soprano, was born on 6 October 1820 at 40 Mästersamuelsgränd in the impoverished neighbourhood of Klara in Stockholm. She was awarded a scholarship to the Royal Opera School, where she made her stage début in a dancing and singing role at the age of ten. On 7 March 1838 Lind created a sensation as Agathe in Der Freischütz, and throughout her life she celebrated that date as the beginning of her phenomenal adult operatic career. She was appointed court singer and made a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, but by the time she was twenty her voice was seriously impaired through overwork and faulty technique. Her career was saved from extinction by a gruelling year's tuition in Paris with Manuel García. On 15 December 1844 Lind made her début in Berlin. The year 1845 marked Lind's triumphant débuts in Hamburg, Hanover, Frankfurt, and Darmstadt. After a third triumphant London season ending as she had begun with Alice in Roberto il diavolo, Lind accepted a contract with the American impresario Phineas Barnum for 150 concerts in America and Cuba. The last significant event of Jenny Lind-Goldsmidt's professional life was her appointment by the prince of Wales as the first professor of singing at the newly founded Royal College of Music in 1883. She died of an inoperable cancer on 2 November 1887.

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