Jenny Lind Birthday & Fun Facts

Jenny Lind Birthday Highlights

Birth Name

Jenny Maria Jenny Lind

Place Of Birth

Stockholm, Sweden

Age

203 years old

Birth Date

October 6 1820

Jenny Lind Facts

Child Star?

no

Occupation

Opera Singer

Education & Qualifications

Royal Dramatic Theatre

Net Worth

$85,000,000

Current Partner

Otto Goldschmidt

Children

Jenny Maria Catherine Goldschmidt Maude, Ernest Svend David Goldschmidt, Walter Otto Goldschmidt

Parents

Niclas Jonas Lind, Anne-Marie Fellborg

Johanna Maria Jenny Lind (October 6, 1820 – November 2, 1887) was a Swedish opera singer known as the Swedish Nightingale.

Jenny Lind was a highly recognized opera singer of the nineteenth century, performing in soprano roles in opera in Stockholm, Sweden, and throughout Europe. She embarked on a very popular concert tour of the United States beginning in 1850. She joined the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in 1840.

Lind rose to prominence after appearing in 'Der Freischütz' in Sweden in 1838. Jenny Lind had experienced vocal damage within a few years, but singing teacher Manuel Garcia recovered her voice. During the 1840s, she was in high demand for opera roles in Sweden and Northern Europe, and she was close friends with Felix Mendelssohn. She retired from opera at the age of 29 after two celebrated seasons in London.

The American press believed Lind's voice represented Germanic cold, untouching tone and style rather than the sincere expression essential for Italian opera.

The opera singer traveled to America in 1850 at the invitation of showman P. T. Barnum. She performed 93 large-scale concerts for him before going on tour under her management. Jenny Lind earned more than $350,000 (equivalent to $11,400,200 in 2021) from these concerts, which she donated to charities, primarily the endowment of Swedish free schools. She returned to Europe in 1852 with her new husband, Otto Goldschmidt, where she had three children and gave infrequent performances for the next three decades before settling in England in 1855. She was a teacher too and taught singing at the Royal College of Music in London for several years, beginning in 1882.

What was Jenny Lind's net worth?

The net worth of Jenny Lind during her time is equivalent to $85 million in 2022.

How much did Jenny Lind earn per year?

There is no precise information available about the annual salary of Jenny Lind.

How tall was Jenny Lind?

There is no information regarding the height of Jenny Lind.

How old was Jenny Lind?

Jenny Lind was 67 years old at the time of her death in 1887.

Lind was born in Klara, central Stockholm, Sweden, the illegitimate daughter of bookkeeper Niclas Jonas Lind (1798–1858) and schoolteacher Anne-Marie Fellborg (1793–1856). Lind's mother divorced her first husband for adultery but did not remarry until after he died in 1834. Lind's parents married when she was 14 years old.

Jenny Lind studied acting with the Royal Dramatic Theatre. Lind began performing onstage at the age of ten. She experienced a vocal crisis when she was 12 years old and had to quit singing for a while, but she recovered. Her voice was severely damaged by overuse and poor singing technique, but her career was restored by Manuel Garcia, a singing teacher with whom she studied in Paris from 1841-1843. He insisted on her not singing for three months to allow her vocal cords to recuperate before he began.

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

Who was Jenny Lind's partner?

Jenny Lind was married to Otto Goldschmidt. They first lived in Dresden, Germany, and then, beginning in 1855, in England for the rest of their lives. They had three children: Otto, born in Germany in September 1853; Jenny, born in England in March 1857; and Ernest, born in England in January 1861.

Best Known For…

Thanks to Meyerbeer's influence, Jenny Lind was hired to sing the title part in Bellini's opera 'Norma' in Berlin in December 1844. This led to other engagements in opera houses around Germany and Austria, but her success in Berlin was so great that she stayed for four months before moving on to other places.

Lind was grieved by the premature death of her cherished friend Mendelssohn in November 1847. She later sang the soprano role in 'Elijah,' a piece he wrote for her, at London's Exeter Hall. The Swedish Nightingale gave her last opera performance on May 10, 1849, in 'Robert le diable.'

P. T. Barnum, an American showman, approached Lind in 1849 with a proposal to tour the United States for more than a year. Lind accepted because she realized it would result in enormous money for charity, particularly the funding of free schools in her own Sweden. Her financial demands were stringent, but Barnum satisfied them, and they reached an arrangement in 1850.

Jenny Lind continued to perform in the concert halls despite refusing all overtures to appear in opera after her return to Europe. The opera singer took the principal soprano part in the first English performance of Robert Schumann's cantata Paradise and the Peri in 1856.

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

Charity Work

Jenny Lind left a large portion of her fortune to help poor Protestant kids in Sweden get an education.

She donated nearly $400,000 to charitable causes during the latter part of her life. A bronze statue of a seated Lind sits on the Djurgården island in Stockholm.