Editing Birgit Nilsson (section)

=== Early life ===
Birgit Nilsson was born Märta Birgit Svensson on a farm at [[Västra Karup]] in [[Skåne]] (100&nbsp;km/60 miles north of [[Malmö]]) to Nils Svensson and Justina Svensson (née Paulsson). When she was three years old she began picking out melodies on a [[toy piano]] her mother bought for her. She once told an interviewer that she could sing before she could walk, adding, "I even sang in my dreams". Her vocal talent was first noticed when she began to sing in her church [[choir]]. A [[choirmaster]] near her home heard her sing and advised her to take voice lessons.

She studied with Ragnar Blennow in [[Åstorp]] for six months to prepare for an audition at the [[Royal Swedish Academy of Music]] in [[Stockholm]] where she came in first out of a group of 47 singers and was awarded the [[Christina Nilsson]] scholarship named for the famous soprano. Her teachers at the academy were [[Joseph Hislop]] and [[Arne Sunnegårdh]]. However, she considered herself self-taught: "The best teacher is the stage", she told an interviewer in 1981. "You walk out onto it, and you have to learn to project." She deplored her early instruction and attributed her success to native talent. "My first voice teacher [Hislop] almost killed me ... [T]he second was almost as bad."<ref name="nyt holland"/>