Biography

Opera singer Malena Ernman is a mezzo-soprano, known not only for opera but also for pop crossover material in several languages. Later in life, she gained some celebrity as the mother of climate activist Greta Thunberg. Born Sara Magdalena Ernman on November 4, 1970, in Uppsala, Sweden, she studied at several prestigious educational institutions, including the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm and the school of the Royal Swedish Opera. For some years, she made opera and concert performances all over Europe, playing the "pants" role of Nerone in Handel's Agrippina in Brussels in the year 2000. That year, on the BIS label, she also issued an album of American composer William Bolcom's Cabaret Songs. Ernman made her classical crossover album debut in 2009 with La Voix du Nord. A double-disc album that features pop crossover songs on its first disc and arias on its second disc, La Voix du Nord was a chart-topping smash hit in Sweden and a Top 20 hit in neighboring Norway. The album includes the classical crossover song "La Voix," which Ernman performed at the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest as the representative of Sweden; her dress for the contest reportedly cost 400,000 Swedish crowns. Composed by Ernman and Fredrik Kempe, and sung in both French and English, "La Voix" reached number two on the singles chart in Sweden and number 20 in Norway. Ernman continued to perform and record into the 2010s, issuing the holiday album Advent on Sony in 2015. Ernman married actor Svante Thunberg, and the couple had two daughters, Beate and Greta; the latter became famous in 2019 as the organizer of a series of international student climate strikes. Greta Thunberg also convinced her mother to give up her international opera career due to the environmental impact of the airline flights it entailed. Ernman continued to perform in Sweden, however, appearing in the musical Så som i himmelen in 2018. She is the author of a book, Scenes from the Heart, about her family and the environment. ~ Jason Birchmeier & James Manheim, Rovi