Jessica Duchen unveils the mystery behind the shiksa-chasing last year of poor Felix's life:
Did Felix Mendelssohn's passion for the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind lead to his early death? If reports of a document buried in the bowels of the Royal Academy of Music are to be believed, a potentially devastating new light is waiting to be shed on the composer's life, his death and his music, on the eve of his bicentenary, which is sparking worldwide celebrations in 2009.
In
1896, Lind's husband, Otto Goldschmidt, allegedly placed in the archive
of the Mendelssohn Scholarship Foundation (housed at the RAM) an
affidavit in which – according to Professor Curtis Price, former
principal of the RAM – he declares that he'd destroyed a letter that
would have been deeply injurious to the reputations of his wife and
Mendelssohn: an 1847 missive from the composer to the soprano declaring
passionate love for her, begging her to elope with him to America, and
threatening suicide if she refused. Lind, one infers, did refuse.
Several months later, Mendelssohn was dead.