Christina Nilsson
Encyclopedia
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
tic soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
. She possessed a brilliant bel canto
Bel canto
Bel canto , along with a number of similar constructions , is an Italian opera term...
technique and was considered a rival to the Victorian era's most famous diva
Diva
A diva is a celebrated female singer. The term is used to describe a woman of outstanding talent in the world of opera, and, by extension, in theatre, cinema and popular music. The meaning of diva is closely related to that of "prima donna"....
, Adelina Patti
Adelina Patti
Adelina Patti was a highly acclaimed 19th-century opera singer, earning huge fees at the height of her career in the music capitals of Europe and America. She first sang in public as a child in 1851 and gave her last performance before an audience in 1914...
. Nilsson became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music
Royal Swedish Academy of Music
The Royal Swedish Academy of Music or Kungl. Musikaliska Akademien, founded in 1771 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies in Sweden...
in 1869.
Biography
Växjö
Växjö is a city and the seat of Växjö Municipality, Kronoberg County, Sweden with 64 200 inhabitants in 2010. It is the administrative, cultural and industrial centre of Kronoberg County. Furthermore it is the episcopal see of the Diocese of Växjö. It has a population of about 64 200, out of a...
, Småland
Småland
' is a historical province in southern Sweden.Småland borders Blekinge, Scania or Skåne, Halland, Västergötland, Östergötland and the island Öland in the Baltic Sea. The name Småland literally means Small Lands. . The latinized form Smolandia has been used in other languages...
, to the peasants Jonas Nilsson and Cajsa-Stina Månsdotter. She was discovered by a prominent civil servant when, aged 14, she was playing the violin at a market in Ljungby
Ljungby, Sweden
Ljungby is a locality and the seat of Ljungby Municipality, Kronoberg County, Sweden, with 14,810 inhabitants in 2005.Ljungby was originally a köping , which did not become a municipality of its own when the first local government acts took effect in 1863, but retained part of the surrounding rural...
. He soon became her patron, enabling her to have vocal training.
In 1860 she gave concerts in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
and Uppsala
Uppsala
- Economy :Today Uppsala is well established in medical research and recognized for its leading position in biotechnology.*Abbott Medical Optics *GE Healthcare*Pfizer *Phadia, an offshoot of Pharmacia*Fresenius*Q-Med...
. After four years' study in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, she had her operatic début 1864 as Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
's opera La Traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
at the Théâtre Lyrique
Théâtre Lyrique
The Théâtre Lyrique was one of four opera companies performing in Paris during the middle of the 19th century . The company was founded in 1847 as the Opéra-National by the French composer Adolphe Adam and renamed Théâtre Lyrique in 1852...
, Paris. After this success she sang at major opera houses in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
, Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
and New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. She also appeared in the Metropolitan Opera's inaugural performance on October 22, 1883 in Gounod's Faust
Faust (opera)
Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
.
Christina Nilsson was married in Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
to the French banker Auguste Rouzaud, who later died in 1882. In 1887 she married Angel Ramon Maria Vallejo y Miranda, Count de Casa Miranda, who died in 1902. In correspondence, Nilsson often signed her first name as Christine, and during the last part of her life she was generally known as the Countess de Casa Miranda.
She died in Vaxjo, Sweden in 1921. Unfortunately, unlike Patti, she never made gramophone recordings of her voice.
In culture
Christine Daaé
Christine Daaé is the main female character in Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera , the young singer with whom the main character Erik, the Phantom of the Opera falls in love.- Character history :...
in Gaston Leroux
Gaston Leroux
Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux was a French journalist and author of detective fiction.In the English-speaking world, he is best known for writing the novel The Phantom of the Opera , which has been made into several film and stage productions of the same name, notably the 1925 film starring Lon...
's novel Phantom of the Opera, and many believe Leroux based the character off of the real-life opera singer, although evidence for this is unverified.
The Dutch artist Anton Pieck
Anton Pieck
Anton Franciscus Pieck , a Dutch painter, artist and graphic artist...
(1895-1987) has an illustration of a street corner scene, in which a sandwich man advertises a performance of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor is a dramma tragico in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian language libretto loosely based upon Sir Walter Scott's historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor....
at the Opera by Christine Nilsson. At the corner, by the sign of the Old Queen's Head Inn, stands a man selling jack-in-the-boxes. At the center of the scene, which presumably takes place in England (London?), circa 1890, we see a man pedaling a penny-farthing
Penny-farthing
Penny-farthing, high wheel, high wheeler, and ordinary are all terms used to describe a type of bicycle with a large front wheel and a much smaller rear wheel that was popular after the boneshaker, until the development of the safety bicycle, in the 1880s...
.
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton , was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.- Early life and marriage:...
's novel The Age of Innocence
The Age of Innocence
The Age of Innocence is a novel by Edith Wharton published in 1920, which won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize. The story is set in upper-class New York City in the 1870s. In 1920, The Age of Innocence was serialized in four parts in the Pictorial Review magazine, and later released by D...
(1920) opens with a description of a performance of Gounod's Faust at the Academy of Music in New York City in the early 1870s with Nilsson performing the role of Marguerite. It is possible that Wharton's impressions actually originated from performances at the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
in the 1880s (she was still a child in the early 1870s). Nilsson is also mentioned in later portions of the novel.
Nilsson is mentioned briefly in Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
's novel Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger...
.