Malena Ernman

Opera singer Malena Ernman, a mezzo-soprano, earned recognition for her work in both opera and multilingual pop crossover repertoire; later she attracted public notice as the mother of climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Born Sara Magdalena Ernman on November 4, 1970, in Uppsala, Sweden, she trained at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm and at the school attached to the Royal Swedish Opera. For several years she appeared in opera productions and concerts throughout Europe, taking the trouser role of Nerone in Handel’s Agrippina in Brussels during 2000. That same year the BIS label released her recording of American composer William Bolcom’s Cabaret Songs.

Ernman entered the classical crossover field in 2009 with the double-disc set La Voix du Nord, placing pop-oriented material on the first disc and arias on the second. The album topped the Swedish charts and reached the Top 20 in Norway. One of its tracks, the bilingual French-and-English crossover single “La Voix,” written by Ernman and Fredrik Kempe, served as Sweden’s entry at the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest; the gown she wore reportedly carried a price tag of 400,000 Swedish crowns. The song climbed to number two in Sweden and number 20 in Norway.

She remained active through the following decade, issuing the holiday collection Advent on Sony in 2015. Ernman’s marriage to actor Svante Thunberg produced two daughters, Beate and Greta; the latter gained international prominence in 2019 by initiating a wave of student climate strikes. Greta persuaded her mother to abandon long-haul opera engagements because of the carbon footprint of frequent flights, yet Ernman continued to appear in Sweden, performing in the 2018 musical Så som i himmelen. She also wrote the book Scenes from the Heart, which examines her family’s life and environmental concerns.