Lorentz Skougaard-Severini

Lorentz Severin Skougaard (11 May 1837 - 14 February 1885) was a Norwegian tenor.

Early life Lorentz Severin Skougaard was born on 11 May 1837 in Farsund, Norway, the son of Jonas Eilertsen Lund Schougaard (1807-1877) and Sara Helene Jonasdatter Lund (1813-1910).

At first he was a trading officer, working at first in Memel, Norway, and then London. He later studied music in Paris and Italy.

Career

In 1864, Lorentz Severin Skougaard sang in Stockholm, Berlin, and Christiania. He met Alfred Corning Clark in Paris in 1866.

In 1866, Skougaard gave a series of recitals in New York City in conjunction with Alfred H. Pease at the Irving Hall. The recitals introduced him favorably to the New York public, and he became a successful vocal teacher.

Personal life

Lorentz Severin Skougaard moved to the United States in 1866. The apartment was a favorite spot for evening musicales, attracted by Skougaard's companionable qualities, and the house for years was known as "Severini Hall". According to Nicholas Fox Weber's biography of the Clark family (The Clarks of Cooperstown, 2007), Clark led a double life, in the United States a family man, in Europe a gay aesthete. For 19 years his closest companion was Skougaard.

On 14 February 1885, in New York City, Skougaard died of typhoid fever.

Legacy Clark eulogized his friend in a privately published biographical sketch, Lorentz Severin Skougaard: a sketch, mainly autobiographic, and created a $64,000 endowment in his memory for Manhattan's Norwegian Hospital, at 4th Avenue & 46th Street.

Clark also commissioned Brotherly Love (1886–87), by American sculptor George Grey Barnard, to adorn his friend's grave in Langesund, Norway. The homoerotic sculpture depicts two nude male figures blindly reaching out to each other through the block of marble that separates them.

Later, Barnard moved to New York City and Clark helped to maintain him.