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Christina Nilsson, circa 1874

Nilsson as Ophelia, caricatured by André Gill, 1868

Autographed photograph

Christina Nilsson, Countess de Casa Miranda, (August 20, 1843 – November 20, 1921) was a Swedish operatic soprano.

She was born Kristina Jonasdotter in the village of Sjöabol, near Växjö, Småland, to the peasants Jonas Nilsson and Cajsa-Stina Månsdotter. She was discovered by a prominent civil servant when, aged fourteen, she was playing the violin at a market in Ljungby. He soon became her patron, enabling her to have vocal training.

In 1860 she gave concerts in Stockholm and Uppsala. After four years' study in Paris, she had her operatic début 1864 as Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata at the Théâtre Lyrique, Paris. After this success she sang at major opera houses in London, St. Petersburg, Vienna and New York. She sang in the Metropolitan Opera's inaugural performance on October 22, 1883 in Gounod's Faust.'

Nilsson married the French banker Auguste Rouzaud, who died in 1882. In 1887 she married Angel Ramon Maria Vallejo y Miranda, Count de Casa Miranda, who died in 1902. In correspondence, Nilsson often signed her first name as Christine, and during the last part of her life she was generally known as the Countess de Casa Miranda.

She died in Stockholm in 1921.

There are many similarities between Nilsson and the character of Christine Daaé in Gaston Leroux's novel Phantom of the Opera, and many believe Leroux based the character off of the real-life opera singer, although evidence for this is unverified.

The Dutch artist Anton Pieck (1895-1987) has an illustration of a street corner scene, in which a sandwich man advertises a performance of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor at the Opera by Christine Nilsson. At the corner, by the sign of the Old Queen's Head Inn, stands a man selling jack-in-the-boxes. At the center of the scene, which presumably takes place in England (London?), circa 1890, we see a man pedaling a penny-farthing.

• The Compelling: A Performance-Oriented Study of the Singer Christina Nilsson, Ingegerd Björklund, Göteborg, 2001
  • Die Goede Oude Tyd, by Anton Pieck and Leonhard Huizinga, Zuid-Hollandsche Uitgeversmaatschappy, Amsterdam, 1980, page 31.
  • De Werelde van Anton Pieck, text by Hans Vogelesang, La Riviere & Voorhoeve, Kampen, 1987, page 197.

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