It is many years ago that the Easy Chair, making the grand tour, was
in Dresden, and saw in the newspaper that Jenny Lind, then in the
first fulness of her fame, would sing for four nights in Berlin. It
was in the autumn, and loitering along the Elbe and through the Saxon
Switzerland was a very fascinating prospect. But the chance of hearing
the Swedish Nightingale was more alluring than the Bastei and the
lovely view from Konigstein, and at once the order of travel was
interrupted, and the Easy Chair arrived eagerly in Berlin.
The Berlin of those days was still a city in which the student could
live economically, and hear the lectures of great teachers upon the
most reasonable terms. But the sole interest of the moment was the
Northern singer, and upon reaching the hotel and making prompt
inquiry, the Easy Chair learned that chairs for the Lind
representations could be secured only at prices which were wholly
unprecedented in the staid Hohenzollern capital. The exigency of the
case, however, compelled the payment, and the Easy Chair devoted
eighteen thaler, or nearly as many American dollars, to obtaining a
seat to hear Jenny Lind for the first time. Never for such a sum was
bought so rich a treasure of delightful and unfading recollections,
always cheering and inspiring--an unwasting music which has murmured
and echoed through a life.
The scene was the Royal Opera-house. The audience was the finest
society of the court; and even then the musical taste of Berlin, as if
forecasting Wagner, used to sneer loftily at that of Vienna, where
Flotow was about to produce "Martha," as a taste for _tanzmusik_. The
opera was the "Sonnambula," and after the pretty opening choruses and
dances, Amina came tripping to the front through the clustering
villagers.
She was an ideal peasant maiden, blooming and blithe and fair, of an
indefinable simplicity and purity; the genuine peasant of the poetic
world, not a fine lady of Marie Antoinette's Petit Trianon playing at
rustic artlessness. The voice and the singing were but the natural
expression of that charming maidenhood. The full volume, the touching
sweetness of tone, the exquisite warble, the amazing skill and the
marvellous execution, with the perfect ease and repose of consummate
art, and the essential womanliness of the whole impression, were
indisputable and supreme. To a person sensitive to music and of a
certain ardor of temperament there could be no higher pleasure of the
kind. Every such person who heard Jenny Lind in her prime, from 1847
to 1852, whether in opera or concert, can recall no greater delight
and satisfaction.
Other famous singers charmed that happy time. But Jenny Lind,
rivalling their art, went beyond them all in touching the heart with
her personality. Certainly no public singer was ever more invested
with a halo of domestic purity. When she stood with her hands quietly
crossed before her and tranquilly sang "I know that my Redeemer
liveth," the lofty fervor of the tone, the rapt exaltation of the
woman, with the splendor of the vocalization, made the hearing an
event, and left a memory as of a sublime religious function. This
explains Jenny Lind's peculiar hold upon the mass of her audiences in
this country, who were honest, sober, industrious, moral American men
and women, to most of whom the opera was virtually an unknown, if not
a forbidden, delight. Malibran had sung here in the freshness of her
voice and charm; Caradori-Allan, Cinti-Damoreau, Alboni, Parepa, and
other delightful singers followed her. Grisi came, too, but in her
decline. Still others have ruled their hour. But in the general memory
of the country Jenny Lind remains unequalled. There was the
unquestionable quality in her song which made Mendelssohn say that
such a musical genius appears but once in a century.
It was a pleasant little New York to which she came, but it thought
itself a very important city. Fanny Ellsler had bewitched the town a
few years before; and some graybeards and baldheads, now tottering in
the sun upon Broadway, but then the golden youth of Manhattan, took
the horses from the Bayadere's carriage and drew her in triumph to her
hotel. Ole Bull, also, had come conquering out of the North like a
young Viking, charming and subduing, and Vieuxtemps came also,
disputing the palm. The town took sides. The virtuosi applauded
Vieuxtemps as a true artist, and shrugged at Ole Bull as an eccentric
player. If you whispered "Paganini?" they silently shrugged the more.
Still the young Viking fascinated young and old. He played like the
Pied Piper, and the entranced country danced after. But when Jenny
Lind came, the welcome to the singer as yet unheard was more
prodigious than that offered to any other European visitor except
Dickens. It was managed, of course, by Barnum. It was advertising. But
that was only until she sang. After that first evening at Castle
Garden the delight advertised itself.
In this day, Wagner _consule_, of the eclipse of Italian opera, the
programme of a Lind concert will perhaps win a glance of curiosity
even from the lovers of "Tristan und Isolde," who follow with
reverence in the parquette the mighty score of the trilogy upon the
stage. Here, for instance, is the programme of a charitable concert of
Jenny Lind's in Boston on Thursday evening, the both of October, 1850,
just a month after her first concert in the country at Castle Garden
in New York on the 11th of September. The programme is a pamphlet
opening with four marvellous wood-cut likenesses of Jenny Lind, Jules
Benedict, her conductor; Signor Belletti, the barytone, and Mr.
Barnum. The words or each song in the original and in translation are
printed upon separate pages, and the whole concludes with sketches of
the lives of Jenny Lind, Signer Benedict, Signor Belletti--and Mr.
Barnum. The selection of music comprises Beethoven's overture to
"Egmont;" an air from the "Elijah," first time in America, sung by
Jenny Lind; "Non piu andrai," from Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro," by
Signor Belletti; piano solo, Mendelssohn's "Songs without Words," by
Signor Benedict; and, for the first time in America also, "Und ob die
Wolke," from "Der Freischutz," by Jenny Lind. This was the first part.
The second part began with Reissiger's overture, "Die Felsenmuhle;"
Signor Belletti then sang the "Piff Paff," from Meyerbeer's
"Huguenots;" Jenny Lind followed with the "Come per me sereno," from
the "Sonnambula," for the first time in America; then Belletti with
the "Miei rampolli," from Rossini's "Cenerentola;" and the concert
ended with the "Dalecarlian Melody" and the "Mountaineer's Song," both
for the first time, by Jenny Lind.
It would be still possible even for the devoutest Wagnerian disciple
to hear such a concert, perhaps, without leaving the hall in
indignation, perhaps even without a protest. All the concerts were of
uniform excellence, and the Easy Chair is a competent witness, at
least so far as attendance is concerned, for it heard all of the Lind
concerts in New York except the first. During the second season an
unknown name appeared one evening upon the bill, which announced that
Mr. Otto Goldschmidt, a young and unknown pianist, would play for the
first time in this country. Tripler Hall, opposite Bond Street upon
Broadway, was crowded as usual, and when Jenny Lind had withdrawn
after singing one of her "numbers," a slight, dark-haired youth came
upon the stage and seated himself at the piano. He was courteously
greeted, and just as he was about to begin, the door opened quietly at
the back of the stage, and Jenny Lind stood in full view of the
audience tranquilly to listen. At a happy point in the performance she
clapped heartily, and the whole house, following its lovely leader,
burst into a storm of applause. The young man bowed to the audience
and to "Miss Lind," and, as he ended, with more hand-clapping and a
bright and kindly smile Jenny Lind vanished, having secured the
success of Mr. Otto Goldschmidt. It was a pretty scene. Perhaps the
_prima donna assoluta_ recalled the famous brava-a-a-a of Lablache on
her first evening at her Majesty's Opera-house in London, which
satisfied England that she was a great singer, and confirmed her
career. To the audience her friendly interest seemed the impulse of
her kindly heart for a young neophyte in this profession. To Mr. Otto
Goldschmidt--!
Ole Bull returned to the country before Jenny Lind left it, and one
evening, when she was staying at the Stevens House, in Broadway by the
Bowling Green, she gave a dinner, and Ole Bull was among the guests.
After dinner he seated himself at the piano, and running over the
keys, struck into some wild minor chords, and began to sing Norwegian
songs. They were of a singular melancholy, but very beautiful, and the
company listened intently. Jenny Lind especially sat rapt in the
music, until, after one of the songs, she rose quietly, and moving
steadily across the floor as if carrying a jar of water upon her head
and fearing to spill a drop, she pushed Ole Bull from his chair, and
seating herself in his place at the piano, reproduced the entire song
with exquisite pathos.
Indeed, it was in these characteristic Northern songs, full of strange
and romantic tenderness, and suggestive of solitary seas and wide,
lonely horizons, of awful mountain heights and secluded valleys of
sober and sequestered life, that her voice seemed most extraordinary
and her skill most marvellous. Romantic singing, picturesque,
mournful, weird, could go no further. She was the spirit of the North
singing its hymn, and the audience sat enchanted under the melodious
spell. A veteran, as he recalls those days, might well suspect that he
is still enthralled by the magician's wand of youth, and that it is
not fact, but only its rosy exaggeration, which he describes. But the
contemporary records of that astonishing career remain, and they
confirm his story. The prices paid for tickets, the enormous receipts,
and the generous gifts in charity of Jenny Lind are not fables. Yet
the glamour of youth has its part in all recollection of the days of
splendor in the flower. Once when the Easy Chair was extolling the
melodious Swede to a senior, the hearer listened patiently, with a
remote look in his eyes, and replied at last, musingly, "Yes, but you
should have heard Malibran."
The series of American concerts which began on the 11th of September,
1850, at Castle Garden ended at the same place on the 24th of May,
1852. The vast space was not well suited for singing, but the
magnificent voice filled it completely, and in the fascinated silence
of the immense throng every exquisite note of the singer was heard.
She sang with evident feeling, and with responsive tenderness the
audience listened. Every time that she appeared she carried a fresh
bouquet, the sight of which gladdened some ardent young heart. But
when at last she came forward to sing the farewell to America, for
which Goldschmidt had composed the music, she bore in her hand a
bouquet of white rose-buds, with a Maltese cross of deep carnations in
the centre. This she held while for the last time in public she sang
in America; and the young traveller who, five years before, had turned
aside at Dresden to hear Jenny Lind in Berlin, alone in all that great
audience at Castle Garden knew who had sent those flowers.