«The Nordic Countries Nightingale»: about Henrietta Nissen-Saloman’s Vocal School

Abstract

The relevance of the topic is due to the introduction into scientific circulation in the last decade of new research materials related to the creative personality of Henrietta Nissen-Saloman. Her «School of Singing», first published in 1880, has been republished. The famous Swedish singer, professor of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, G. Nissen-Saloman has trained about thirty outstanding performers, vocal teachers for nineteen years of her life in Russia.The purpose of this publication is to reveal the significance of the artistic and pedagogical activities of Nissen-Saloman for the formation and development of the national vocal school. The authors' tasks include presenting the main stages of her creative path, opera and concert repertoire, and characteristics of her work at the conservatory during the Russian period of her life.The principles on which the vocal-pedagogical system of G. Nissen-Saloman was based – consistency, gradu-alness and expediency in acquiring technical skills, the formation of musical-theoretical knowledge and a sense of style among pupils – were inherited by her students. Among them are N. A. Iretskaya, E. A. Lavrovskaya, V. M. Zarudnaya, who made a significant contribution to the continuation of the Nissen-Saloman’s traditions in the St. Petersburg and Moscow conservatories, on concert and opera stages.The historical distance, which allows us to objectively consider the leading provisions of the Nissen-Saloman methodology in the context of the experience of foreign masters (primarily M. Garcia), the pedagogical approaches of M. I. Glinka, A. E. Varlamov and other creators of the Russian national singing school, gives grounds for a high as-sessment of the effectiveness of her system. Without a doubt, G. Nissen-Saloman is one of the cohort of the found-ers of the Russian vocal school and occupies an honorable place in it, and her «Singing School», created during the formation and heyday of the national vocal art, is of great practical importance for the training of modern young singers.