Chapter X: The Return to Berlin

The entries in an album kept by Mdlle. Lind at Copenhagen extend to Oct. 22, 1845. On the 23rd, or 24th, she quitted Denmark and went to stay with her friend Consul Arnemann, and his wife and family, at Nienstädten, near Altona; and on the 28th she wrote from thence to Madame Wichmann, the wife of the sculptor, at whose house—No. 1, in the Hasenheger (now the Feilner) Strasse—she had been invited to spend the coming winter at Berlin.

The letter, written in French, and the first of a long and interesting series from which we shall have frequent occasion to quote, ran thus:—

“Nienstädten bei Altona, 28 Oct. 1845.

“DEAR AND AMIABLE MADAME WICHMANN,

“I am very grateful for the kind letter which I had the honour to
receive from you, and more enchanted still to find that you retain for
me the kindly feeling which makes me so pleased and happy.

“I have been unwell for some time. I caught cold at Copenhagen, and
was therefore unable to go either to Hanover or to Bremen or anywhere
else. It is because of this indisposition that I am now staying with a
very good friend, Madame Arnemann, near the town of Altona, where I am
getting quite well, and resting myself.

“But in the meantime it is necessary that I should start for Berlin,
and it is for this reason, dear Madame, that I take the liberty of
informing you that I leave this place to-morrow morning—or on the
30th; and I expect to be in Berlin on the 31st.

“I go from here to Zelle, and from thence I hope to reach Berlin, by
railway, in a day. To-day is Monday, and on Friday I hope to have the
pleasure of seeing you again.

“It will be very nice to have my maid there. I only feared, Madame, on
your account, that it would not be agreeable to you to have so many
strange faces about you. I hope to find you in good health, and your
family also; and, until then, good-bye, dear, good, and kind Madame
Wichmann.”[54]

The approaching winter season promised to be a brilliant one. Mdlle. Lind took part in it for five months, from Nov. 9, 1845, to April 2, 1846, during which period she sang twenty-eight times, including her own benefit. As her second engagement was, like the first, for _Gastrollen_ only, there exists among the archives of the Opera-House no written contract from which we might ascertain the amount of the _honorarium_ she received. All we know is that on Saturday, Nov. 1, 1845, the play-bills, after announcing the first performance of Mendelssohn’s _Œdipus in Colonos_ in the theatre attached to the New Palace at Potsdam, added, in a footnote, that application for tickets for Mdlle. Lind’s first two operatic performances would be received on Monday, Nov. 3. On Nov. 4 the advertisement was repeated, and on the 5th appeared a notice to the effect that no more tickets for the first two performances remained unsold, though—as during so great a part of the former season— the prices were raised, to all parts of the house.

The series of _Gastrollen_ began on Nov. 9 with _Norma_, which was repeated on the 13th; and the journals of the day criticised these revivals with no less enthusiasm and no less minuteness in detail than they had imported into their notices of the original performances in 1844. The Berlin journal laid great stress on the fact that the artist had “learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” That she had passed through the fiery trial of a long succession of triumphs without once yielding to the temptations with which it is invariably associated, and had returned to Berlin bringing back her own lofty ideal in all its original purity. We will not, however, follow the critics in their prolonged analysis of works already fully discussed, but pass on, at once, to the _rôles_ produced this season for the first time.

The first of these was Mozart’s _Il Don Giovanni_—the greatest by far of his dramatic works—in which she appeared, for the first time in Berlin, in the character of “Donna Anna,” on Nov. 19, repeating the part on the 21st and 25th.

On the first occasion on which she undertook the part the performance derived an additional interest from the fact that it took place on the “name-day” of the Queen, in honour of which the Opera was mounted with new scenery of unusual splendour. All the artists engaged did good service to the general effect; and the “Zerlina” of Fräulein Tuczec received high praise at the hands of the critics. The performance, indeed, was an exceptionally fine one in every respect; and the Opera was given five times during the season with ever-increasing interest and raised prices of admission.

The next new Opera was Weber’s _Der Freischütz_.

To give entire satisfaction to a German audience in this first and most famous of Romantic Operas is no easy matter. The work is so thoroughly German, so well known, so deservedly popular, and affords so many precious opportunities for the display of vocal and histrionic talent, that it is not to be wondered at that singers of other than German nationality approach it, on the national stage, with a certain amount of diffidence; nor can we feel surprised that, since the part of “Agathe” has been so often performed by native singers of the highest excellence, a German audience usually listens to its impersonation in a frame of mind severely critical and not inclined to be easily satisfied.

The Opera was first produced at the then newly-opened _Schauspielhaus_ in Berlin, on June 18, 1821—the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo— which Weber looked upon as a lucky day. The first performance took place under unheard-of difficulties. Spontini, who then held the post of General Musical Director to King Frederick William III., was strongly prejudiced against it. None of Weber’s previous Operas had really succeeded; and his friends trembled for the fate of this. At the last rehearsal, everything went wrong. Yet the work was received by the public with an enthusiasm which bordered upon frenzy, and ever since that eventful night it has kept its place on the German Lyric stage with undiminished success, and year after year it is received in every German Opera-House with a welcome as warm as that which greeted its first presentation years ago. The Germans seem, indeed, incapable of tiring of it; and at the Royal Opera-House in Berlin it is more frequently performed than any other Opera, _Don Juan_ alone excepted.

Mdlle. Lind first impersonated the part of “Agathe” at Berlin on Nov. 30, 1845; and on Dec. 2 the _Berlinische Zeitung_ contained the following remarks on her performance:—

“It gives us more than ordinary pleasure to record that, through the
performance of Jenny Lind, _Der Freischütz_ has received a new impulse
and a new birth. The whole organism of the work is enlivened with the
beat of a stronger pulse. The singer began her performance in a modest
tone. In the duet with ‘Aennchen’ she set before us the gentle homely
element alone. In the grand _Aria_, later on, the most heartfelt love
and the tenderest breath of maidenhood were blended together and
hallowed, both of them, with sincerest piety. The singer was not
contented with continuing her prayer so long only as it was indicated
in the music: she retained it in her soul, that it might ring forth as
a thank-offering even in the ecstasy of love that occupied her to the
last moment. No singer has ever before adhered so closely, or with
such warmth and clearness, to the religious tone with which Weber has
coloured this entire scene. That it produced an outburst of stormiest
applause, which was only with difficulty calmed down after it had long
delayed the progress of the drama, was no more than the natural effect
of so beautiful a performance.

“In the third act the performance was still happier. In some passages
in the _Prayer_ her voice seemed to float upwards, like a cloud of
incense—a musical glamour with which no other singer has ever so
enchanted us in this composition.

“We need scarcely say that at the close shouts and a call before the
curtain resounded on every side, though after having been so deeply
moved by truest Art such a conclusion to the performance is rarely
pleasant.”

If ever critic struck the right note in his analysis, Herr Rellstab struck it here. “So dear to her heart was the masterpiece _as a whole_,” he says—and he says well. We know, from her own words, how dear it was to her. He found it out, from the manner of her performance. He did not know, as we do, the story of that memorable March 7, in 1838, when she made the famous discovery recorded in one of our earlier chapters—the discovery that she had within her the power of striking out an original conception, of forming an ideal of her own untinged by the colouring of other artists, of identifying herself with a being of her own creation, of thinking its thoughts, of speaking its words, feeling its pains, its agonies of anxiety, its pangs of cruel torture, its suspense, its hopes, its consolations, its bursts of rapturous joy. He did not know that she had discovered this—but he saw the results of the discovery, and with the instinct of a true critic he traced them to their veritable source— saw that it was not for its two great songs, but _as a whole_, that the masterpiece was so dear to her—that she had created a real character to illustrate the composer’s meaning in its entirety, and that in this character she thought, and wept, and smiled, and lived, and had her being. How could it have been otherwise? How could she, who loved all Nature with so true a love; she to whom forest, and tree, and stream, and mountain spoke with a voice so clear and sweetly intelligible that she had never once in her whole life misunderstood it; she to whom the voice of the birds was as familiar as her own; how could she have failed to identify herself with “Agathe,” the Forest Child? If she had actually lived in the hunting-lodge, instead of imagining that she lived there, would not every bird and beast and butterfly, every wild creature that haunted the surrounding forest, have made her its friend? She was herself a Forest Child; as true a Child of Nature as ever lived. And _Der Freischütz_ was so dear to her, _as a whole_, because it is essentially the Opera of Nature. Strange as it may seem to say so, it is precisely through its marvellous truth to Nature that it reaches the supernatural. And all this ghastly conflict between the supernatural and the natural is—or ought to be, if rightly understood—inseparable from the part of “Agathe.” It forms the key-stone of the entire conception; and it is only when it is fully and frankly asserted that Weber’s delightful heroine can appear upon the stage clothed in the ideal beauty with which he has surrounded her character.

And now, after having analysed in detail Mdlle. Lind’s ideal interpretation of some of the greatest masterpieces of dramatic and musical Art, we may be allowed to withdraw our attention for a moment from the Stage, with its turmoil and its enchantment; the glamour of its poetry on the one side and the disappointment of its cold illusions on the other, its thunders of applause in front of the curtain and its heart-burning cabals and conflicts of bitter jealousy and mercenary self-interest behind it. We may leave, for awhile, this strange scene of mingled reality and deception, while we turn temporarily aside for the purpose of refreshing ourselves with some pictures of a different kind.

We have seen many instances of the calmness with which Mdlle. Lind accepted the enthusiastic applause which was so freely lavished upon her. But it would be a great mistake to infer from this that she was insensible to, or ungrateful for, the admiration she excited. The secret of her outward calmness was that she accepted it, not for herself, but, in the name of the Art of which she herself was the most fervid worshipper in the crowd.

Her own state of feeling with regard to her position in Berlin at this particular period may be satisfactorily gathered from a letter written by her to Madame M. Ch. Erikson, an eminent Swedish actress, with whom she had long been on terms of intimacy, and who died, at the age of sixty-eight, in 1862.

“Berlin, Nov. 24, 1845.

“MY DEAR MADAME ERIKSON,

“It was with the wildest pleasure and rejoicing that I had the honour
of receiving your kind letter, and I cannot thank you enough for it.

“I use no empty words when I say that my rejoicing was intense, for I
had not forgotten that it was you who first guided my sensitive young
mind towards higher aims, or that it was you who saw beneath the
surface and fancied that you had discovered something, overlooked by
others, behind those small grey insignificant eyes of mine.

“How changed is everything now! What a position I have now attained!
All the musical talent of Europe is, so to speak, at my feet. What
great things has the Almighty vouchsafed to me! It gives me real pain
to lose the inexpressible satisfaction of submitting the progress I
have made to the judgment of one who so well understood me before
there was any one else who would even believe in my capacity to do
anything at all—and that one so rare and gifted an artist as yourself!

“What a pity it is that we Swedes cannot get on in our own country! No
fame! nothing! nothing!

“What a celebrity you yourself ought to have become, with that grace
of yours—that charm displayed in every movement when you are before
the curtain! What a sensation ought not that, in itself, to have
produced! for grace is scarce upon this earth.

“In seven months only I have succeeded in making my reputation here:
and, after seven years at home, not a creature knew anything at all
about me. At this present moment all the first engagements in the
world are offered to me! After seven months! Is it not strange?

“I have lately appeared in ‘Donna Anna’; and have every reason to be
more than satisfied with the reception that was accorded to me. The
Berlin public is terribly critical. But, this I like; for, if I take
pains, I am at least properly appreciated. They want to analyse my
every gesture—every shade of expression. Indeed, one has to be
careful; but this certainly tends to mental cultivation.

“I am going to sing in _Der Freischütz_ and the _Die Vestalin_; for
Operas such as these win the greatest and most solid fame; though such
_rôles_ are not to be lightly approached. And, moreover, I have to
sustain no trifling comparisons; for the moment I step forward I am
measured with the Sontag-measure, or that of the greatest artists that
Germany has produced.

“Perhaps you think that I have grown vain? No. God shield me from
that! I know what I can do. I should be very stupid if I did not. But
I know, equally well, what I cannot do.

“I have not yet quite made up my mind whether I go to Vienna in the
spring or not. In the meantime, I wonder whether I may venture to tell
you that, next autumn, I mean to return home quite quietly, and to
settle down, caring nothing for the world. You will call this a crime.
But please to reflect, just a little, how difficult it is to stand all
this racing about—alone!—alone! with the certainty of having to rely
on my own judgment in everything, and yet so absorbed at the same in
my _rôles_. Oh! it is not easy. However, we will not talk of this just
yet. Enough to say that connection with the Stage has no attraction
for me—that my soul is yearning for rest from all these persistent
compliments and this persistent adulation.

“And here I will finish; assuring you of my sincere affection,

“And remain,
“Your grateful pupil,
“JENNY LIND.”

It must be confessed that these remarks addressed to Madame Erikson accord very well with the expressions used by Mdlle. Lind when addressing Mrs. Grote on the same subject some two months before the foregoing letter was written.

But in any case, whether she then seriously contemplated an almost immediate retirement from the Stage, or only thought of it as a desirable and extremely probable contingency, she made the noblest use of the pecuniary advantages she derived from it.