Baltimore’s Front Street Theatre had undergone “extensive alterations and improvements” in 1850. Carpenters Carnan & Eckert built out a parquet for standing room theatergoers. “Skillful” painter John Delpher was hired to apply a fresh coat of paint. New curtains were hung, and 600 cushioned seats with spring-backs were installed.
A decade and a half later, Abraham Lincoln would be nominated as the republican presidential candidate in “the old Front Street Theatre”; through the years the theater was scene of the occasional theft or shooting. Those events would fade from memory long before the concerts that necessitated the 1850 renovations.
Hundreds of Baltimore citizens gathered in the rain on Monday December 9th, 1850 for a chance at tickets to see Jenny Lind, “The Swedish Nightingale,” live in concert. Front row tickets went for the modern equivalent of a few thousand dollars. Many would-be concertgoers were dismayed that many of the remaining tickets – about 1900 in all, were quickly bought up for resale.
For the next few days, ads appeared in the Baltimore Sun, offering tickets to see Jenny Lind. Businesses that didn’t have tickets to sell advertised hats to wear to the concert, “Jenny Lind Bouquets” for the concert, “Jenny Lind Candy” bearing “a perfect likeness of the divine songstress.”
While it is true that P.T. Barnum did much to promote the fervor over Lind’s American tour, the singer was not unknown in the U.S. before his efforts.
Would-be fans could read in the newspapers about the success of Lind’s European concerts, purchase sheet music of her songs, and even buy fabric and hats named after the singer. In 1848, the Front Street Theater hosted a comic play called “Jenny Lind at Last.” Across town, more “questionable skits” about Jenny Lind were performed at the Howard Street Theater.
As Lind embarked on her tour of the U.S. in 1850, fans could closely follow her travels in the news. By the time Jenny Lind arrived in Baltimore in December, “mob town” had been worked into a characteristic lather. According to Lind’s biographer:
“In anticipation of her advent, some two or three thousand persons had gathered in Canton Avenue, from Broadway to the President Street Depot, with the view of obtaining a sight of her. These clustered in dense throngs around the [train] cars on their arrival… She was then driven off to the City Hotel. Here also an immense crowd had assembled, and at length, to their repeated cries for her presence, she appeared at an upper window, bowed her thanks and waved her handkerchief to those assembled, (in the rain and mud,) and then retired.
Towards the evening, the weather gradually cleared off, and about eleven o’clock, a band of musicians proceeded to the Hotel, for the purpose of serenading her. On this occasion the crowd was even larger than it had been in the morning, and at the close of the serenade she was again vociferously called for, and once more appeared. While standing at the balcony, bowing to the loud and enthusiastic applause of the multitude, she had the misfortune to drop her shawl – I say the misfortune, as she never saw the shawl again. In less than a minute it was torn into fragments, which were distributed to all who were standing near enough, to be preserved as a slight memorial of the songstress.” – “Jenny Lind in America,” C. G. Rosenberg, 1851
The Front Street Theatre
“Lind-mania” reached a fever pitch thanks to P.T. Barnum’s promotion of Jenny Lind’s voice and her virtuous character, but 1850′s crowds were primed for this kind of excitement. This was an era when people got into riots at Shakespearean Plays.
“People enjoyed opera in English for its entertainment value, not as a vehicle for self-enhancement or ‘classical’ improvement. Favorite airs and overtures found their way into brass-band concerts, amateur piano playing at home, and music boxes. Melodramas featured parodies of operatic plots and music. From a production standpoint, opera was big business, attracting far larger and more diverse audiences than did formal symphonic concerts of the time or, for that matter, opera today.
The star system drove the passion for opera to a near frenzy, as audiences clamored for big-name singers.
It played havoc with local actors and musicians, who were at the mercy of touring star performers’ irregular schedules, limited rehearsal time, and repertory choices.
Local managers also disliked this arrangement, but the public supported it wildly, eager to see exotic actors and singers whose reputations in some cases were well earned and in others rested entirely on hired clappers, exaggerated handbills, and contrived newspaper ‘puffs.’” – “Musical Maryland,” David K. Hildebrand and Elizabeth M. Schaaf, 2017
When Lind performed her Front Street Theatre concerts, the amphitheater was packed, and people crowded outside, “anxious to catch the stray notes which the power of her voice might project beyond the walls of the theater.”
The Sun gushed that the “most brilliant audience [they] had ever witnessed” was “electrified by her astonishing powers as a vocalist” and “winning expression of kindness and good nature.”
The lyrics “Come hither, come hither, my pretty bird, Huah, huah, huah, huah, huah” were executed “in a style so novel, so difficult, and withal so enchanting, that it defies adequate description,” the Sun reported.
Memories of Jenny Lind’s concerts appeared in the Baltimore Sun throughout the following decades
Of course, not everyone appreciated the ubiquity of Jenny Lind.
In the Cecil Whig, a correspondent from “Lindiana” reported that “we had yesterday the pleasure of being shaved with a Jenny Lind razor, by a Jenny Lind Barber, scented with Jenny Lind cologne… put on a Jenny Lind hat, walked into a Jenny Lind restaurant, partook of Jenny Lind sausages…” and on and on until they “fell into a profound Jenny Lind reverie.”
Many of my cookbook manuscript authoresses were at least taken enough with Jenny Lind to save the recipe for “Jenny Lind Cakes.” Emily Niernsee, whose cookbook is in the collections at the Maryland Historical Society, used baking soda and cream of tartar to leaven her cakes, and flavored them with vanilla. These modern choices persuaded me to use her recipe.
The results, which I baked in a muffin pan, were pleasant and not too sweet.
The legacy of the Front Street Theatre ultimately came to a tragic end. In December 1895 a panic over a false fire alarm became known as the “Front Street Theatre Disaster” when at least 23 people were trampled to death. The building was razed in 1904.
Despite this, Jenny Lind’s concerts lingered in the Baltimore memory for decades to come, with readers writing letters reminiscing about the monumental event, or sharing photos of their saved ticket stubs and programs. One man wrote of how he’d arrived at the theater to find the concert sold out. With two gold pieces in his pocket, he bribed the door man to get in. “He said afterward that if he had had to pay $100 to hear Jennie Ling sing he would have considered it worth the money.”
As Jenny Lind was ushered covertly to her train for Washington DC, the Baltimore Sun recalled, (apocryphally), she “expressed herself as better pleased with Baltimore and its people than any American city she had visited.”
Recipe:
“Stir a coffee cup of butter with one pound of pulverized sugar – add the yolks of 6 eggs well beaten – 1 teaspoon of soda dissolved in a cup of milk, 2 teaspoons of cream tartar in four(4) cups flour. Beat the whites very light and add alternately with the flour. Flavor with lemon or vanilla.”
From the Emily [Bradenbaugh] Niernsee’s cookbook (1861), John R. Niernsee Papers, Maryland Historical Society Special Collections MS2457
Some sources:
Jenny Lind in America.
C. G. Rosenberg, 1851.
Stringer & Townsend.
Musical Maryland.
David K. Hildebrand and Elizabeth M. Schaaf 2017.
JHU Press.
Baltimore: A Not Too Serious History.
Letitia Stockett. 1997.
JHU Press.
Baltimore: Its History and Its People, Volume 1.
Clayton Colman Hall. 1912.
Lewis Historical Publishing Company.
