P3 has note
| - This pen and ink drawing on a silk handkerchief is anonymous but depicts the Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind (1820-1887) as Marie the vivandière in Donizetti's<i> La Fille du Regiment</i>. Jenny Lind took London by storm after her first appearance at Her Majesty's Opera House on 4 May 1847 as Alice in Meyerbeer's opera <i>Robert Il Diavolo</i> and made her first appearance as Marie on 27th May. Queen Victoria attended both her first nights, and after seeing her as Marie on the 27th wrote in her journal that Jenny Lind: 'again had a great triumph, acting and singing exquisitely. She looked very pretty in her vivandière's dress and was so sprightly in that character, having touching moments when she takes leave of the Regiment.'
Jenny Lind trained in Stockholm and Paris and made her début in 1844 in Berlin, performing in Germany and Austria before making her London début. She became such a phenomenon in London that her portrait was reproduced on all manner of items, from snuff boxes and matchboxes to soap and candle snuffers. The contemporary song 'Jenny Lind Mania' celebrated the craze for her, starting: 'Oh! Is there not a pretty fuss, In London all around, About the Swedish Nightingale, The talk of London town, Each square and street as through you pass, Aloud its praises ring, About this pretty singing bird, The famous Jenny Lind.'
The artist who penned this image of the scene in the Tyrol in Act I of the opera chose to do it on a fringed silk handkerchief, possibly because it made it a more luxurious souvenir than a drawing on paper. (en)
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