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

Historical role models
The Björling ‘<strong>Opera</strong>’
The Björling model of domestic opera schooling was active at the dawn of
the modern era, but it was a recipe for success with roots going back to
the eighteenth-century Romantic view of prodigies and their abilities. The
best-known example of this is Leopold Mozart and his launching of his children
in the upper-class environment of Austria (Ling 2009, pp. 24f). Taking
the young Franz Liszt (1811-1886) as a starting point, Ling describes this
wonder-child syndrome as a family project concentrated in Vienna. Characterised
by an energetic, educative father, a supportive mother, and brothers
and sisters with whom to share and compare musical progress, these
families could be compared to the Björling family in the early 1900s (ibid.,
pp. 24-35).
The touring that David Björling undertook reflected the promotion of
prodigies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the tradition of
travelling opera societies all over Europe, not least in the Nordic countries
(Tegen & Lewenhaupt 1992, p. 154). It is possible that he used his experiences
and contacts from the time he was with the Eklöf-Trobäckska <strong>Opera</strong>
Society in promoting the Björling quartet. A successful opera society that
could have been a more distant source of inspiration was the family opera
the tenor and singing pedagogue Manuel Garcia Sr. led at the beginning of
the 1800s.
Manuel Garcia Sr. (1775-1832) was a Spanish opera singer with a clear
interest in voice training. He specifically targeted his own children, whose
musical education he initiated with enthusiasm. The Garcia children were
integrated into their parents’ opera society at an early age, and schooled
within the opera repertoire. His daughter Maria, who went on to marry
Malibran, one of the most famous singers of the 1800s, made her debut
at the age of three as a child in Paër’s Agnese. Another daughter, Pauline,
who later married Viardot, was also taught during the tours, as was his
son Manuel Garcia Jr., founder of the world-famous Garcia School in Paris
(Levien 1932, pp. 12-14, 18-20, 23; cf. Liljas 2007, pp.426-429).
Conclusions
The Björling family ‘school’ represented a form of domestic voice training
that was common at the time, particularly in the historical context of the
Nordic opera tradition. Domestic opera education was, from a pedagogical
perspective, a didactic phenomenon that differed in basic principles from
43