Before 1850 when showman P. T. Barnum brought the Swedish
soprano Jenny Lind to these shores for a legendary and triumphant tour, the young United
States had celebrities, but no stars in the sense of a performing artist of such renown as to be a household word to millions who might never see her in person.
Entertainment
itself was suspect as a gateway to sin and sloth in much of the country, especially if indulged in by the lower classes who should not be tempted
from their 10-12 hours a day, six days a week labor for their
employees and a Sabbath dedicated to
pointing out to them what sinful,
undeserving wretches they were.
So who were American
celebrities? Well, preachers for one. Famous evangelists and revivalists like George
Whitefield and his heirs, or
heady intellectuals like William Ellery Channing. Collections of sermons were the bestselling books in the country and a
really fine preacher could attract huge audiences to outdoor camp meetings or keep parishioners coming back week after week to large and
prosperous churches while being welcomed everywhere in pulpit exchanges.
In fact orators of all stripes were famous.
The mid-week lecture platform rivaled the Sunday
morning pulpit as a showcase for verbal dexterity. Crowds plunked down good money to hear
the nation’s leading intellectual and
philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, a
touring literary lion like Charles Dickens, or even the unbelievable—a female reformer like abolitionist
and women’s rights advocate like
Lucretia Mott.
Of course politicians and statesmen were
avidly followed. Their speeches were
widely printed in the press and the political rally and stump speech were popular mass
entertainment. Eloquent speakers like Daniel Webster or fiery ones like John C. Calhoun attracted devoted
followings. The proration of Webster’s Second
Reply to Haynes was so popular that generations of school boys would be forced to memorize
and recite it.
Portraits
of military and naval heroes
as well as prints depicting their noble deeds like the Marquis de Lafayette, Oliver Hazard Perry, Andrew Jackson, or Winfield Scott hung on parlor walls or over bars across the country.
Finally there were what we would now call folk heroes—Sam Patch, The Yankee Leaper who became the first famous American daredevil after successfully jumping from a raised platform into the Niagara River near the base of the Falls, or Davy Crockett whose exaggerated exploits were chronicled in the early predecessors of the dime novel.
But outside local notoriety there were no singers,
musician, or actors.
There were as yet no great civic orchestras. At best chamber
ensembles would perform for a small educated
elite in cultural centers like Boston.
Small bands performed for
the balls elite, or where dancing was not outlawed for the more moderate classes. Most musicians were amateurs or part timers.
Similarly, theaters had been
allowed to open in some cities with Puritan
roots only with in recent decades.
Some actors had established resident
troops in a handful of cities, and bands of actors toured the country
performing Shakespeare and popular melodramas, but the play was the advertised attraction and
few actors were widely known by name.
The Englishman Julius Brutus
Booth would be one of the first to promote himself by name.
Minstrel
Shows, which would become the leading musical entertainment of the
second half of the 19th Century, were
just in the beginning of their formative stages.
Traveling menageries, dog and pony
shows, and small circuses were
popular, but individual acts were hardly household names.
Enter Phineas T. Barnum, who had been associated with early circuses, and
had found a niche exhibiting curiosities. His first was George Washington’s alleged childhood slave nurse. By the 1840’s
he had established his American Museum in
New York City which featured
performances by dwarf General Tom Thumb as
well as musical acts, and native dancers.
Barnum, an ardent Universalist as
well as a promoter, publicly
advanced the shocking notion that
ordinary working men and women deserved leisure and entertainment as much as the wealthy. He was essentially inventing American show business.
In 1844 and ’45 Barnum toured Europe
with Tom Thumb, who created a sensation and was introduced to Queen Victoria and the Russian Tsar. It was then that he became aware of the
enormous popularity of Jenny Lind, a lovely Swedish opera singer noted for her pure
crystalline voice, humility, and Christian
piety. Then still in her mid-20’s
she was at the height of her fame triumphing in London, Berlin, and Vienna as well as in the Scandinavian capitals. Barnum, who was personally tone deaf, never went to see her, but
he took note of her popularity.
Lind was born on October 6, 1820 in Stockholm.
She was the illegitimate
daughter of a bookkeeper and the
proprietress of a day school for girls. Despite her situation, her mother was quite
religious and would not allow her lover to divorce. Finally, when her father’s wife died, her
parents were able to wed when she was 14.
By that time she was already an established wonder child singer.
Little Jenny had been singing around
her home all of her life with no training.
When she was nine years the maid of Mademoiselle
Lundberg, the principal dancer
at the Royal Swedish Opera happened
to hear her on a visit to her mother’s school.
The next day she returned with Lundberg, who arranged for her attend to
the acting school of the Royal Dramatic Theatre. The Lind studied with Karl Magnus Craelius, the singing
master at the theater.
She was successfully singing on the
stage by age 10. But due to inadequate training, she severely damaged her vocal chords at age 12 and nearly lost her fledgling career. After recovering, in 1838, she got her first
great role as Agathe in Weber’s Der Freischütz at the Royal Swedish Opera. She was soon after honored as court singer to King Oscar I of Sweden and Norway.
Lind in her early 20's was already and established European opera star when Johan Gustaf Sandberg painted her in Sweden
But her vocal trouble returned due
to over-use. She turned herself over to
teacher Manuel Garcia in Paris in 1841-’42. Garcia prescribed total vocal rest, even from speaking,
for three months to allow her voice to heal, and then completely retrained her in techniques for
preserving her magnificent instrument.
When she recovered, Lind was dealt one of the few disappointments of her career. She auditioned for the Paris Opera—and was turned down. The French did not believe her voice was “warm enough” and that she had shaky control in her lower register. She would occasionally hear these complaints throughout her career voiced by those used to singers trained first in Italian opera. Lind was hurt enough that a few years later when she was the most famous singer in the world, she rejected offers to sing at the Paris Opera. In fact she rejected most dates of any kind in Paris.
She rejoined the Stockholm Opera and toured regularly. In 1843 she had an extensive tour of Denmark where Hans Christian Anderson fell in love with her. She admired him and enjoyed his company, but soon found his obsessive attentions alarming. Anderson was said to have based some of his fairy tales on her—Beneath the Pillar, The Angel, and The Nightingale. After she definitively rejected him and returned to Sweden, Anderson got revenge by making her the model of the Snow Queen—beautiful but with a heart of ice.
Lind’s
international reputation soared in
1844 when she was invited to Berlin to
sing Norma.
Her success in the part was so great that she remained in the city for
month performing in many of the most popular operas, both German and
Italian. She drew the professional
adoration of composers Robert Schumann,
Hector Berlioz, and Felix Mendelssohn. Giacomo
Meyerbeer wrote the leading soprano role for his paean opera to the Prussian Royal House of Hohenzollern. Although she was not able to premier the
part, when she did it in Berlin in January 1845 audiences went wild. One critic described an aria, “Jenny Lind has
fairly enchanted me ... her song with two concertante
flutes is perhaps the most incredible feat in the way of bravura singing
that can possibly be heard.” The song
became a signature peace that she included by request in her later concerts.
Mendelssohn, who conducted her
personally in Leipzig, was more than
professionally interested. He, like
Anderson, fell in love. Lind was slender
and fair skinned with shining light brown hair.
She had a sweet disposition, modesty, and was noted for her lack of diva pretentions. Still in her mid-20’s men found it easy to
fall in love with her. She evidently
returned the married Mendelssohn’s affections, but her strict Lutheran morality made her reject his
pleading to consummate an adulterous relationship. He evidently composed passionate love letters in which he threatened suicide if she did not give herself to
him. These letters were destroyed after
his death, but their existence was confirmed by those who saw copies. Despite the pressure, Lind remained close to
the composer. He frequently conducted
for her and started an opera, Lorelei, for her, based on the
legend of the Lorelei Rhine Maidens
which was unfinished at his death. He also tailored the aria Hear
Ye Israel in his oratorio Elijah to Lind’s voice.
After extending her German stay with
a tour of other cities, Lind returned for her season with the Stockholm Opera
and seems to have had a romantic relationship with her frequent co-star there, tenor Julius Günther. They may have even become engaged, but their tour schedules—and
Lind’s far greater fame and acclaim, separated them and made marriage
impossible.
In 1846 Lind spent the season in Vienna which she conquered just as she
had Berlin. She was feted by the
Imperial Family.
The following year she extended her
triumph to London where she enjoyed
her greatest success yet. Mendelssohn
attended her English début as Alice
in an Italian version of Robert le Diable. Queen
Victoria was also in attendance.
She would work in London for the next two years. That summer she sang the world premiere of Verdi’s I masnadieri with the
composer himself conducting.
Lind was devastated by the news of
Mendelssohn’s death in November 1847.
The following year she made her first appearance in an oratorio to sing
the soprano part in Elijah to raise money for a memorial to the composer. The single performance raised more than
£1,000, an astonishing amount. With that
a subsequent benefit performances Lind raised the money to create the Mendelssohn Scholarship for “pupils of
all nations and [to] promote their musical training.” The first recipient was 14 year old Arthur Sullivan, a prodigy in whom Lind had taken an interest.
Barnum had been in London for all of
this and had noted the adulation accorded the woman now acclaimed as the Swedish
Nightingale and took due note.
Although she never explained, Lynd
socked the music world early in early 1848 by announcing her planned retirement
from the opera. She was not yet 28 years
old and still at the height of her powers.
She never explained her motivation and there has been much speculation
as to why. The timing suggests it might
have something to do with her continued mourning of Mendelssohn. Her last performance in an opera was on May
10, 1849 with Queen Victoria once again in attendance.
Although she retired from the opera,
Lind did not fade into oblivion. She
continued to perform on the concert
stage, mostly for her favorite charities including the Mendelssohn
Scholarship and a project to build free
public schools back home in Sweden.
She also made herself available to other good causes. In the process she helped create the
tradition of benefit performances. And her generosity only endeared her more
than ever to her adoring fans.
Back in New York City, when Barnum
heard the news he made arrangements for an agent to make an offer the Swedish
Nightingale could not refuse. He was
prepared to risk everything to bring her to America.
At first reluctant, Lind could
indeed not turn down the astonishing opportunity Barnum offered—$1,000 each for
150 American performance plus full expenses.
This was at a time when many Americans—subsistence farmers and
laborers—did not earn $1000 in cash money over a life time and when that amount
of money over a year would sustain a very comfortable middle class life in a
large home with multiple servants and carriage.
Lind was a smart business
woman. She first checked Barnum’s credit
and found it solid. She made a counter
offer—that her whole fee be paid in advance and deposited in her London bank
and that a singing partner and musical director/pianist each of her own choosing
be included. That brought Barnum’s total
upfront cost to $187,500, far more cash than the showman had. No banks would finance a loan secured by the gate of the concerts. The would-be impresario had to mortgage his Bridgeport,
Connecticut home, the American Museum, and all of his other holdings. And he was still $5,000 short and in danger
of having the deal fall through. Finally
he was able to tap a wealthy Philadelphia
minister for the balance by convincing him that Lind’s well known Christian
piety and charity would elevate the public
morals.
The deal was done, with the
inclusion of an escape clause that
allowed Lind to withdraw from the tour after sixty or one hundred concerts,
paying Barnum a $25,000 penalty.
While Lind prepared to make the
voyage to the States, Barnum swung into action.
Few Americans except the small class rich enough to make the Grand Tour of Europe or visit on
business had ever heard of Jenny Lind.
Opera music was not yet popular entertainment. Luckily no one in America was better prepared
to overcome that than Barnum who added the words ballyhoo, hoopla, and press
agent to the American vocabulary.
He built his initial blitz of
publicity on the eye-popping size of Lind’s contract, her reputation for
charity, and effusive praise for her voice and beauty. “If I knew I should not raise a farthing
profit I would yet ratify the engagement,” Barnum modestly told the New
York Herald, “so anxious I am that the United States should be visited
by a lady whose vocal powers have never been approached by any other human
being, and whose character is charity, simplicity and goodness personified.”
He flooded the country with engraved
portraits and glowing biographical pamphlets.
As the date of her arrival drew closer he arranged to have her image to
be printed on commemorative plates, costume jewelry pins, and that most
American of all salutes—a cigar box. Before Lind set foot in the country she was famous and the
respectable middle class was convinced that, at all costs, they must see her.
In August of 1850 Lind, Italian baritone Giovanni Belletti, German conductor and pianist Julius Benedict, plus Miss Alimanzioni, her Italian traveling companion and her Swedish secretary Max Hjortsberg arrived in Liverpool to embark. Lind gave to hugely successful farewell concerts for charity. Thousands jammed the docks to see her board the reigning queen of trans-Atlantic packets the side paddle SS Atlantic. Even faster sailing clipper ships sped accounts of the departure scene to New York, where Barnum made sure they were front page news.
The Atlantic docked in New York on September 1. A mob scene greeted Lind and her party at the
dock and there were several minor injuries in the pushing and shoving to get
close to her. When she came down the gang plank, Lind kissed her hand and
laid it on an American flag telling
the crowd in flawless but charmingly accented English, “There is the beautiful
standard of freedom, which is worshipped by the oppressed of all nations.” It
seems that Miss Lind was no slouch as a promoter herself.
Her first two concerts were
scheduled at Castle Gardens and were
charity affairs for local causes. Barnum
sold tickets by auction. 4,476 tickets were sold at a total price of
$24,753. The program included Lynd’s
most famous set pieces, Casta diva from Norma, a duet with Belletti, the trio for two flutes and voice
composed for her by Meyerbeer, and Swedish songs. She also sang a piece composed by her music
director to words by New York poet Bayard
Taylor called Greeting to America.
After she left the stage to riotous applause, Barnum stepped out and
announced that Miss Lind would donate her $1000 fee for the evening’s
performance to the local charity beneficiaries.
These concerts open Lind’s eyes to
how lucrative the concert tour would be.
Once again she insisted on re-negotiating her contract. In addition to her flat fee, she would now
receive all of the proceeds from the gate of each show beyond a $5,500 per
concert management fee was paid. She
also insisted that at each concert at least some $1 and $2 seats be reserved
for the less fortunate.
The first New York appearances set
the stage for what amounted to a triumphant procession. Lynd worked her up and down the East Coast
with multiple concerts in most cities—Boston,
Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Richmond, Virginia and by ship to Charleston, South Carolina. On the way to Charleston, her ship nearly
was lost in a gale. There was a side trip for concerts in Havana, Cuba.
From Cuba Lind sailed to New Orleans where the sophisticated and cosmopolitan population turned out in droves for several concerts where seats were in such demand that Barnum was able to sell tickets for the ticket auction. Then up the Mississippi by riverboat to Natchez, Mississippi, Memphis, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri then off to Louisville, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Ohio, Pittsburgh, and again to Philadelphia.
By then it was July of 1851 and Lind
had completed her minimum obligation to Barnum under their contract. She was uncomfortable with Barnum’s
aggressive marketing—and by now was so famous that she did not need it. She exercised the escape clause and continued
the tour under her own management. The
parting was not acrimonious and Barnum and Lind remained friendly. During their association Lind had raised
$350,000 for her charities and Barnum raked in at least $500,000. Plenty of reason for good cheer all around.
Next Lind was off to New England where 20 year old Emily Dickinson recoded in a letter:
...how bouquets fell in showers, and the roof was rent with
applause—how it thundered outside, and inside with the thunder of God and of
men—judge ye which was the loudest;
how we all loved Jennie Lind, but not accustomed oft to her manner of singing
didn’t fancy that so well as we did her. No doubt it was very fine, but take
some notes from her Echo, the bird sounds from the Bird Song, and some of her
curious trills, and I'd rather have a Yankee. Herself and not her music was
what we seemed to love—she has an air of exile in her mild blue eyes, and a
something sweet and touching in her native accent which charms her many
friends. ... as she sang she grew so earnest she seemed half lost in song.
Shortly after that concert Benedict
left the tour to become musical director at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London.
Lynd invited a young friend, Otto
Goldschmidt to replace him. Despite
his being nine years younger than the singer, romance bloomed. When the young Jew publicly converted to Episcopalianism it was a sign of how
intense his feelings were. The couple wed in Boston on February 2, 1852.
Afterwards Lind made sure that she was publicly billed as Madam Jenny
Lind Goldschmidt.
Shortly after that concert Benedict left the tour to become musical director at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London. Lynd invited a young friend, Otto Goldschmidt to replace him. Despite his being nine years younger than the singer, romance bloomed. When the young Jew publicly converted to Episcopalianism it was a sign of how intense his feelings were. The couple was wed in Boston on February 2, 1852. Afterwards Lind made sure that she was publicly billed as Madam Jenny Lind Goldschmidt.
The tour continued with added stops
in Canada before returning to New
York for farewell performances featuring a new song, Farewell to America with
words by C.P. Cranch and music by
Goldschmidt. Then the couple sailed away
back to England on May 29, 1853.
They left behind a country that had
been changed, fired with a new enthusiasm for opera and classical music—and
indeed for all of the performing arts now that Lind had demonstrated that they
could not only be respectable, but uplifting.
A mania for building concert
halls and opera houses was
launched. Many of the most noted
European musicians and actors became alerted to the possibilities of the
American audience and launched their own tours, broadening the American
cultural experience. Other promoters
learned from Barnum who to promote new attractions. Other stars shown in American skies, but for
many years none matched the super nova that
was Jenny Lind.
Lind and Goldschmidt first lived in Dresden, Germany before relocating
permanently to England in 1855. The
couple had three children and by all accounts were devoted and happy. Lind continued
to make charity concert appearances, although with declining regularity as
years went on. Goldschmidt’s own career
as a pianist, composer, conductor, and teacher flourished. He became a professor in 1863 and later vocal
director at the Royal Academy of Music. When her husband formed the Bach Choir in 1875, Lind trained the
sopranos and sang in the début concert.
In In 1882, she was appointed Professor
of Singing at the newly founded Royal
College of Music. She believed in an all-round musical training for her
pupils, insisting that, in addition to their vocal studies, they were
instructed in solfège, piano, harmony, diction, deportment and at least one
foreign language.
In 1883 Lind announced her permanent
retirement from the stage. Her farewell
appearance was a benefit concert at Royal
Malvern Spa near her retirement home at Wynd’s Point, Herefordshire,
on the Malvern Hills. She was in increasingly frail health and died
on November 7, 1887 at the age of
67. She was buried in a local cemetery
but a memorial plaque with a profile
cameo was installed in Poets Corner, Westminster Abby.
Goldschmidt wrote a biography of his
wife, Jenny Lind: Her Career as an Artist originally published in
German but soon translated into English.
He died in 1907 at age 77 in London.
Lind has been commemorated in numerous ways, including being represented on
Swedish bank notes and having had
several ships named for her. She has
appeared as a character in novels
based on her relationships with Hans Christian Anderson, Mendelsohn, and as a
muse for Fredrick Chopin. She has been portrayed in films including
the 1930 Hollywood picture A Lady’s
Morals, with Grace Moore as Lind
and Wallace Beery as Barnum; a 1941
German musical biography, The Swedish Nightingale; Hans Christian
Andersen: My Life as a Fairytale, featuring Flora Montgomery as Lind in
2005; and most recently in the P.T. Barnum musical fantasy The Greatest Showman.
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