Opera on the Move in the Nordic Countries during the Long 19th ...

18 Juvas Marianne Liljas
such young singers: Olle, six years old, sang “La donna é mobile” from
Rigoletto, in Italian, and between the songs the three-year-old Gösta turned
a somersault on the floor of the choir stalls. By that time the Björling boys
had already had several years of training in singing from their father (Liljas
2007, p. 235). 3
An early-established identity appears to have been the key to success for
singers throughout history. On the European continent Henriette Sontag
(1806-1854) began her singing career as a child, just as Jenny Lind (1820-
1887) did in Sweden. Sontag was already singing smaller parts at the age of
eight, and made her full debut as a 15-year-old. Later on she was trained in
Paris under the tutelage of Manuel García. Another example is the coloratura
soprano Adelina Patti (1843-1919), who was born into the Patti family’s
opera company and started her opera career as a little girl. She is said
to have performed demanding arias at the age of seven, and because of the
attention she attracted she saved the company from bankruptcy. Just like
the Björling boys she was placed on a table in the concert halls so that the
audience would be able to see her better (Fuchs 1963, p. 26). What was apparently
common to these early debuts was the informal training carried
out in the home. Patti’s parents were both opera singers, and her brother
started to teach her in a home environment characterised by singing. She
made her debut at the age of 16 in Donizetti’s opera Lucia di Lammermoor
(ibid., p. 26).
Aspects of informal learning are gaining more and more attention in education
research. One reason for this is that such learning mirrors teaching
outside of institutions, and affects the field and its capacity for self-understanding
(Rostwall & Selander 2008, p. 24). It is an interesting perspective
on the domestic opera education that took place in musicians’ homes during
the 1800s, and on which there is little documentation (Rosselli 1992, p. 93;
Liljas 2007, p. 13f; cf. Jander 1980, p. 342). Tegen (1955) connects the private
field of vocal education to the rising interest among the bourgeois in singing
combined with a shortage of singing schools. The private music institutes
that appeared during the century focused mostly on instrument teaching
(Tegen 1955, p. 100). Moreover, there was a general tendency among the
upper classes in earlier periods to educate their children at home, which
went on long into the twentieth century (Hartman 2005, p. 22-24). In this
3 “What is to become of these children?”: A study of David Björling’s way of teaching and
the background to it in older traditions of teaching singing (2007) explored the pedagogy
behind David Björling’s education of his children in singing. The intention was to place
Björling’s methodology in a historical context. The main starting point was therefore to
investigate what pedagogical and didactic traditions had inspired him.