Jenny lind and p.t. barnum
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Translation to English: Viveka Åkerhielm
The earliest years 1820 – 1829
Jenny (baptized Johanna Maria) was born on 6 October 1820 in S:a Clara parish in Stockholm at a midwife’s residence on Mäster Samuels gränd 32, later Mäster Samuelsgatan 40, a house that was demolished in 1954. Her divorced, and at the time unmarried, mother, Anna Maria Fellborg, lived in the Old Town of Stockholm with her eight-year-old daughter, first at Österlånggatan 39, then briefly at Drakens gränd 2, and from 1824 for a time at Västerlånggatan 39 where she ran a girls’ school. The new born Jenny was reported to have unknown parents and was left for her first three years with the church organ player Ferndal´s family in Ed, Sollentuna, north of Stockholm.
Her mother then sent her to a couple living in Borgerskapets änkehus (a house for bourgeois widows) on Hamngatan (where the department store NK now is located) with her maternal grandmother in the same house. Famous is the story of how the six-year-old was heard singing to her cat in such a remarkable voice that she already in 1829 was asked to audi
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Who was Jenny Lind, the real-life opera singer in The Greatest Showman?
13 November 2020, 17:08
Nicknamed the ‘Swedish Nightingale’, Jenny Lind was a soprano whose voice was admired by Chopin, Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, no less! She may have found 21st-century fame from the film The Greatest Showman, but Lind was a lot more than P.T. Barnum’s singing money-maker.
At Jenny Lind’s London début in 1847 at the Haymarket, she gave a performance so arresting that Queen Victoria threw a bouquet of flowers at her feet.
Would you like to find out more about famous women of classical music?
But the Swedish Nightingale had unusual beginnings. Born out of wedlock and into a life of poverty, Lind had her first break at just nine years old, when she was accepted as a voice student at the Royal Theatre of Stockholm. By her early teens, she was a renowned opera singer.
What was her voice like?
Sure, The Greatest Showman has a fabulous pop-musical soundtrack, and Lind’s character’s belting ballad ‘Never Enough’ – dubbed by Loren Allred – is as ear-wormy as it gets. But it definit
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Jenny Lind, the 19th-Century Taylor Swift?
February 16th, 2024
By John Marks, Curator
“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes” – attributed to Mark Twain
Unless you’ve been off the grid for months, you’ve heard quite a bit about Taylor Swift. We’ll continue to, as she takes her concert tour to Asia, Europe, and back to the US this year. For some, it may feel reminiscent of Beatlemania or Elvis. For a historian, it reminds me of Jenny Lind’s American tour from 1850 to 1852.
Johanna Lind (1820-1887), a Swedish soprano, gained fame in Europe as an opera singer. She retired from opera at the age of 29 and focused on concerts. In 1850 P.T. Barnum signed her to perform in America. Barnum’s flair for promotion whipped Americans into a frenzy before Lind arrived in September 1850. She gave 93 concerts under Barnum’s management, then parted ways with him and continued to tour for almost a year.
Merchants were quick to market items connected with Jenny Lind. The most famous was the Jenny Lind bed. The one shown here is at Rose Hill Mansion. Lind was reported to have pref
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