The parenthetical thought came so unexpectedly that the adoring audience
let a whole other sentence go by before it gasped collectively.

In the middle of her scholarly and loving tribute to Jenny Lind in Herbst
Theater this afternoon, Barbara Bonney quoted Lind's first teacher telling
the teenager "you're awful, forget it, it's all over." Without pause or
emphasis, Bonney added:  "Elisabeth Schwarzkopf told me that once." Gasp,
indeed.

After her superb recital last night, Bonney was in top form again, speaking
about and "demonstrating" the Lind heritage, with songs, stories,
explanation, and good humor.

The first slide of Lind Bonney showed was her favorite, a lovely drawing of
the singer, "completely false," an idealized portrait in which Lind looked
"rather like Dawn Upshaw."

As long as a century and a half ago ("before there was a New York Times"),
Bonney said, the "Swedish nightingale" became "the first diva and, at the
same time, the first anti-diva," much hyped but exhibiting sincerity,
charity (giving away as much as half her income), and simple, heartfelt
kindness.  With a light voice ("something like Judith Blegen"), great
coloratura, "not much of a middle voice," and "a phenomenal technique I
couldn't begin to learn," Lind's fame was really the creation of P.T.
Barnum, according to Bonney.

Lind, she said, was in fact the very first example of "product placement."
Bonney described it as the process of turning an artist (or a product) into
a celebrity, and then sell the celebrity (more than the artist).  "She was
the first Barbra Streisand," Bonney said, looking at her innocent best.

("I'd be very sorry if anybody thought of me as a diva," Bonney said later.
"To me, a diva is somebody hitting people with her handbag.")

With Barnum's advance publicity, ticket raffles, and other tricks, in 1850,
there were 40,000 people waiting for Lind's arrival in New York, the singer
protected by "beefy, gorgeous firemen." Bonney exhibited a clear case of
singer envy, speaking whistfully of 10-minute ovations here, 25 curtain
calls there.  "We are lucky to get 15 seconds."

The singer in Bonney is clearly dazzled by Lind's 93-concert American
Tour (before planes, cars or amplification) and continued undertaking
of such killer arias as "Casta Diva" from Baltimore to Havana; but the
historian-ironist continues to be tickled by the singer's product-placement
adventures of the "Jenny Lind chewing tobacco" and "Jenny Lind sausages"
and tea kettles whistling in Jenny Lind's famous F-sharp -- the note
favored by Mendelssohn ("Lind's greatest love") in songs he wrote for her.

When Lind visited Washington, President Fillmore and Daniel Webster (both
near the end of their lives) came to pay their respects, the debate on
slavery was suspended for a week.  In the musical name-dropping department
back in Europe, Lind was a friend of both Schumanns, concertizing with
Clara (in a perhaps precedent-breaking event featuring two women); and
Chopin raved about her voice's "amazing purity."

Although quitting opera at 28, Lind continued to sing close to the end
of her life (at 67).  What was the secret of Lind's strength, coping with
those gruelling tours, never canceling a concert, and singing music much
too heavy for her voice, Bonney was asked.  "She came from good Swedish
stock, and all that fish and moose meat," Bonney said.  And what's *her*
secret? "I play golf."

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