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

228 Jens Hesselager
quite simply because Pauline Rung was not in fact Jewish – not officially, in
any case. However, the story of her life and of her possible Jewish and/or
Christian identity is somewhat complicated.
In the biographical sketch published by Rung’s daughter, Sophie Keller
(née Rung, 1850-1929), published in 1918, no mention is made of the
possibility that Pauline Rung might be Jewish (Keller 1918). Pauline Charlotte
Frederikke Lichtenstein, we learn from the sketch, was born in Berlin
on 21 July 1818 from whence her family at some point moved to Gothenburg
in Sweden. There her father died tragically in a work-related accident
when Pauline was eight. When the rest of the family moved back to Berlin,
Pauline stayed behind, taken care of by the German actor Carl Becker and
his family, who ran a travelling theatre company which performed primarily
in Sweden, Denmark and northern Germany. Eventually, Pauline too took
part in the performances and became much admired, both for her attractive
looks and her beautiful singing voice. Amongst her most important roles
was Hulda in the popular Das Donauweibchen: Volksmärchen mit Gesang – a
role that demanded metamorphosing her way through a number of guises
(an old mother, a Savoyard, a mermaid queen, etc.) (Keller 1918, 9-11; Hensel
1798, 1). Another role for which she attracted special attention was the
title role in Carl Maria von Weber’s Preciosa, in which she starred as the
beautiful gypsy girl. In other words, it seems that somewhat exotic qualities
tended to be associated with her professional persona already at this early
stage of her career or that she gave such roles with particular success.
While it may not be possible to determine for which theatrical role
Pauline Rung’s exotic attire in this portrait is intended, it does lend some
credibility to Thomas Overskou’s description, some twelve years earlier, of
her “beautiful, southern exterior”.
1818: The Baptism
Presumably, Sophie Keller would have mentioned that her mother was Jewish
if this was in fact the case. The only detail that might imply her Jewish
heritage is a brief comment about the wedding between Pauline and Henrik
Rung on 30 October 1841 –a “quiet” wedding owing to the circumstance
community who had spent the years since 1838 in silence, metaphorically crying by the
rivers of Babylon – an implication that may or may not have been intended as a subtle
suggestion that Royal Theatre audiences tended to consist of liberals who sympathised
with the culture of the French July monarchy, of which Halévy’s La juive, of course,
was a product.