A Daguerreotype of Jenny Lind, taken in New York on September 14th, 1850 by her Swedish friend Poly Von Schneidau from Chicago. Lind had recently arrived for a two-year tour of the USA, organised by now legendary showman P. T. Barnum, to a rapturous welcome. On her return to Europe, jaded by Barnum’s commercial energy, she married composer and pianist Otto Goldschmidt, and in 1855 settled in England to continue her career at a less frenetic pace. Goldschmidt founded London’s Bach Choir and was a friend and associate of Sir William Sterndale Bennett. Lind’s last public performance was the title role in his oratorio ‘Ruth’.
Introduction
In a letter to Douglas Jerrold, dated Paris, February 14th, 1847, Charles Dickens related an anecdote about the opera singer Jenny Lind (1820-1887), popularly known as the Swedish Nightingale. Her celebrity throughout Europe bordered on the hysterical, as Dickens shows.
I AM somehow reminded of a good story I heard the other night from a man who was a witness of it and an actor in it. At a certain German town last autumn there was a tremendous furore about Jenny Lind,* who, after driving the whole place mad, left it, on her travels, early one morning.
The moment her carriage was outside the gates, a party of rampant students who had escorted it rushed back to the inn, demanded to be shown to her bedroom, swept like a whirlwind upstairs into the room indicated to them, tore up the sheets, and wore them in strips as decorations.
An hour or two afterwards a bald old gentleman of amiable appearance, an Englishman, who was staying in the hotel, came to breakfast at the table d’hôte, and was observed to be much disturbed in his mind, and to show great terror whenever a student came near him.
Johanna Maria ‘Jenny’ Lind (1820-1887). Lind settled in England in 1855, a country she had come to know and love as a friend of Felix Mendelssohn. She became a favoured performer of his music, as well as an acclaimed interpreter of the operas of Mozart, Bellini, Schumann and Dickens’s friend Meyerbeer. In 1882 she was appointed professor of singing at the Royal College of Music in London.
Précis
In 1847, Charles Dickens recounted an anecdote about a recent visit of opera singer Jenny Lind to Germany. It seems that after she left her hotel, besotted student admirers sought out her room in order to grab mementos of her visit, and in doing so badly scared a harmless old English gentleman staying at the same establishment. (57 / 60 words)
In 1847, Charles Dickens recounted an anecdote about a recent visit of opera singer Jenny Lind to Germany. It seems that after she left her hotel, besotted student admirers sought out her room in order to grab mementos of her visit, and in doing so badly scared a harmless old English gentleman staying at the same establishment.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 60 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 50 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: although, besides, just, since, unless, whereas, whether, who.
Word Games
Sevens Based on this passage
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Variations: 1.expand your answer to exactly fourteen words. 2.expand your answer further, to exactly twenty-one words. 3.include one of the following words in your answer: if, but, despite, because, (al)though, unless.
Jigsaws Based on this passage
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
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