On June 15 Herr Lindblad arranged an interview with Meyerbeer, and Jenny Lind sang for him the aria from "Roberto" and from "Norma." The composer was much pleased with her voice, but seems to have entertained doubts as to whether it was powerful enough to fill the auditorium of the Grand Opera.
Garcia himself considered her voice still somewhat fatiguée, and not quite attained to the quality of which in a few months it would be capable.
It may have been this which Meyerbeer noticed. At any rate, in order to satisfy himself upon the point, he wished to hear her sing on the stage of the theatre itself. Accordingly, on the 24th an audition took place, in which she gave the three grand scenes from "Der Freischütz, "Robert le Diable," and "Norma." Meyerbeer was delighted, and made such comments as, "Une voix chaste et pure, pleine de grâce et de virginalité," while the next day he spoke of her to Berlioz with the greatest enthusiasm. He was anxious for her to make her appearance in London soon. Garcia, however, feared that the fame of Grisi would hinder his pupil from receiving a real chance. He therefore prevented her from making her début there till five years later, when she achieved a veritable triumph.
On October 10, 1842, the prima donna opened at the Stockholm theatre with a performance of "Norma,"—the very opera in which she had closed her appearances on June 19, 1841.
It must have been a direct challenge to the critical world of Stockholm, to recognise the change that had intervened between the two performances. What that change was we learn from an estimate supplied by a most competent and judicious critic, who sang with her often, both before and after her visit to Paris. He writes as follows:—
"When, during the years 1838-40, Jenny Lind enraptured her audience at Stockholm by her interpretation of the parts of Agathe, Pamina, Alice, Norma, or Lucia, she succeeded in doing so solely through her innate capacity for investing her performances, both musically and dramatically, with truthfulness, warmth, and poetry.
"The voice and its technical development were not, however, in sufficiently harmonious relation with her intentions.
"In proof of this it was noticed that the artist was not always able to control sustained notes in the upper register—such, for instance, as the A flat above the stave in Agathe's cavatina, 'Und ob die Wolke'—without perceptible difficulty; and that she frequently found it necessary to simplify the fioritura and cadenza which abound in florid parts like those of Norma and Lucia.
"Nay, there were not wanting some who, though they had heard her in parts no more trying than that of Emilia in Weigl's 'Swiss Family,'—a rôle which, in many respects, she rendered delightfully,—went so far as to doubt the possibility of training the veiled and weak-toned voice in a wider sense.
"Yet, in spite of this, Jenny Lind, when resuming her sphere of action at the Stockholm theatre, proved not only to have acquired a soprano voice of great sonority and compass, capable of adapting itself with ease to every shade of expression, but to have gained also a technical command over it great enough to be regarded as unique in the history of the world. Her messa di voce stood alone—unrivalled by any other singer.