THE SWEDISH NIGHTINGGALE August 30

The theme of the penultimate festival day is young heirs. Jenny Lind was Sweden’s first international superstar, and counted H C Andersen, Felix Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann and even England’s Queen Victoria among her admirers. Here, she is celebrated by two of today’s Swedish opera stars: Elin Rombo, who was awarded the Jenny Lind grant in 1999, and Annie Ternström, last year’s winner of Young Artists.

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Way out west in the United States, on the road between San Francisco and the El Dorado National Forest, is the old mining community, Jenny Lind, near New Lake Hogan. 450 miles north, a herd of musk oxen graze on Jenny Lind Island’s grassy meadows in Nunavut in Canada in the North Arctic Ocean. In another part of the world, smoke and steam billow forth out of a majestic Jenny Lind locomotive on a historic railway in England. But who was Jenny Lind, the Swedish nightingale?

In 1820, Johanna Maria Lind was born, one of the greatest ever Swedish stars. She was never called anything other than Jenny. It is difficult to really comprehend how idolized this young singer was. She was just 29 years old when she retired from the opera stage, having achieved tremendous international fame in the five years since she made her debut in Berlin in 1844. H.C. Andersen said of her that no one else had such a profound influence over him as a poet: “She opened the door to the sacred rooms of art for me.”

Jenny Lind was enrolled as a student at the Royal Opera when she was nine years old, five years younger than the minimum enrolment age. In her own words, she was “a small, ugly, timid, awkward little girl with a broad nose and stunted growth”. But she could sing like no other, and her debut as Agathe in Der Freischütz (The Marksman) at the age of 17 took the audience’s breath away. She had tremendous drive, a unique voice, amazing coloratura and a diminuendo that diminished into nothingness. She had an intense presence on stage as well as in life. But she also experienced stage fright before performances and could be curt and unkind to the people around her.

The year after her final opera performance, she embarked on a tour of America that left its mark on the world to the extent that her name is still recognized almost 200 years later. On her arrival in New York, she was met by 30,000 cheering people and disembarked to a cascade of flowers. The tour manager, the legendary entrepreneur P.T. Barnum, sold concert tickets by auction and the deeply religious Jenny Lind donated almost all of her unimaginable income to charity after the tour.

But what significance does Jenny Lind have for us today? Just a glimmering fantasy or a face on a banknote, or can she open the door to the sacred rooms of art even for us? Before the 200th anniversary of Jenny Lind’s birth in 2020, Sveriges Television and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra will explore her life and career in a drama documentary as well as in this concert with gems from her magnificent repertoire.

Text: Janna Vettergren

SWEDISH RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

2019/2020

Participants

Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra

The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra is a multiple-award-winning ensemble renowned for its high artistic standard and stylistic breadth, as well as collaborations with the world’s finest composers, conductors, and soloists. It regularly tours all over Europe and the world and has an extensive and acclaimed recording catalogue.

Daniel Harding has been Music Director of the SRSO since 2007, and since 2019 also its Artistic Director. His tenure will last throughout the 2024/2025 season. Two of the orchestra’s former chief conductors, Herbert Blomstedt and Esa-Pekka Salonen, have since been named Conductors Laureate, and continue to perform regularly with the orchestra.

The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra performs at Berwaldhallen, concert hall of the Swedish Radio, and is a cornerstone of Swedish public service broadcasting. Its concerts are heard weekly on the Swedish classical radio P2 and regularly on national public television SVT. Several concerts are also streamed on-demand on Berwaldhallen Play and broadcast globally through the EBU.

Tomo Keller, Concermaster

Swedish Radio Choir

32 professional choristers make up the Swedish Radio Choir: a unique, dynamic instrument hailed by music-lovers and critics all over the world. The Swedish Radio Choir performs at Berwaldhallen, concert hall of the Swedish Radio, as well as on tours all over the country and the world. Also, they are heard regularly by millions of listeners on Swedish Radio P2, Berwaldhallen Play and globally through the EBU.

The award-winning Latvian conductor Kaspars Putniņš was appointed Chief Conductor of the Swedish Radio Choir in 2020. Since January 2019, its choirmaster is French orchestral and choral conductor Marc Korovitch, with responsibility for the choir’s vocal development.

The Swedish Radio Choir was founded in 1925, the same year as Sweden’s inaugural radio broadcasts, and gave its first concert in May that year. Multiple acclaimed and award-winning albums can be found in the choir’s record catalogue. Late 2023 saw the release of Kaspars Putniņš first album with the choir: Robert Schumann’s Missa sacra, recorded with organist Johan Hammarström.

Marc Korovitch, Choirmaster

Chief conductor of the Jeune Choeur de Paris, he started a collaboration with the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart in 2013 (including a recording of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé), and also works regularly with the Chœur de Radio-France and the Choeur Accentus since 2014, for tours, radio performances, recordings, preparations and A Cappella concerts. He collaborates with many personalities, such as Sir Simon Rattle, Gustavo Dudamel, Daniele Gatti, Louis Langrée, Stéphane Denève, Daniel Harding, Laurence Equilbey, L. G. Alarcon… He has also conducted the WDR Rundfunkchor in 2016. In July 2016, he has prepared both the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart and the NDR Chor for Berlioz’s Romeo et Juliette. In 2017, he has participate to the opening of the Seine Musical conducting the choir accentus and in 2018, he starts a collaboration with the Croatian Radio Choir. Korovitch works for many festivals: the Mozartwoche in Salzburg, Recontres Musicales d’Evian, the Festival de Radio-France in Montpellier or the festival Mozart in New York.

Evan Rogister, conductor

The conductor Evan Rogister is Chief Conductor at the Washington National Opera and for the Kennedy Center Opera House orchestra. In Sweden, he has performed at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm as well as the Göteborg Opera and Malmö Opera. Currently, he is conducting a five-year project with Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelunge at the Göteborg Opera. He recently made his debut at the Bolshoi Theatre with Puccini’s La Bohème and at the Metropolitan Opera with Mozart’s The Magic Flute. He has also staged Wagner’s Rienzi at Deutsche Oper and regularly collaborates with both the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra and l’Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse. Evan Rogister also trained as a trombonist and baritone soloist at Indiana University and Juilliard in the United States.

Elin Rombo, Jenny

The court singer Elin Rombo has a number of opera roles, as well as royal baptisms, royal celebrations and Nobel Prize award ceremonies on her resumé. She made her debut at the Royal Swedish Opera while still a student at the University College of Opera and made her breakthrough with a specially written role in Sven-David Sandström’s Batsheba. In the spring of 2019, she will play both the queen in Szymanowski’s King Roger and the lead role in Léhar’s The Merry Widow at the Royal Swedish Opera. Her other prominent roles include Agnès in George Benjamin’s Written on Skin at Nederlandse Opera and the lead role in Helmut Oehring’s AscheMOND oder The Fairy Queen at Staatsoper Berlin. As a concert singer, she has also performed works such as Brahm’s Ein deutsches Requiem with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and both Schubert’s Mass in G major and Mozart’s Requiem with the Orchestre de Paris.

Annie Ternström, Young Jenny

The soprano Annie Ternström won the “Unga Artister” competition in the spring of 2018. The year before, she was awarded the Joel Berglund scholarship for young vocal students. She has performed with the Stockholm Concert Orchestra in Steve Dobrogosz’s Reqiuem and with the Högalid Chamber Orchestra and Voices of Humanity in Vivaldi’s Gloria. She has also performed at Confidencen in the Ulriksdal Palace Park.