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90 A CENTURY OF BALLADS
she afterwards devoted to founding and endowing art scholarships in Sweden, and to various chanties in this country.
Of the wonderful career of the " Swedish Nightingale" there are stories and anecdotes galore. Though somewhat of a digression from the subject of "Home, Sweet Home," and of ballads generally, I cannot refrain from quoting the description of her first introduction to Manuel Garcia which appears in Holland and Rockstro's Memoirs of Jenny Lind.
"Mademoiselle Lind called on Manuel Garcia and formally requested the great teacher to receive her as a pupil. After making her sing through the usual scales and forming his own opinion of the power and compass of her organ, he asked her for the well-known scena from Lucia di Lammermoor—' Perche non ho.' In this, unhappily, she broke down completely, in all probability through nervousness, for she had appeared in the part of Lucia at the Stockholm Theatre no less than thirty-nine times only the year before, and the music must therefore have been familiar to her. However, let the cause have been what it might, the failure was complete, and upon the strength of it the maestro pronounced his terrible verdict : ' It would be useless to teach you, mademoiselle ; you have no voice left.' |
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