JENNY LIND
December 20, 1850

On a wet, foggy day in December 1850, a steamer navigated up the Potomac River bound for Richmond with the “Swedish Nightingale’” onboard. Later that evening the international celebrity Jenny Lind glided across stage into the spotlight. When Lind voiced the enchanting Bird Song, Richmonders welcomed her exquisitely soft voice resembling “the music of pearls in a golden basin.” The applause was deafening.

In this increasingly prosperous Southern metropolis, concertgoers paid as high as $105 ($3,018 in 2016) for a ticket. The auctioneer and American showman P.T. Barnum, who later founded Barnum & Bailey Circus, drew in a full house by fabricating Lind’s anti-abolitionist views and promoting her new celebrity status. Leaving a Lind stamp on Richmond, she donated to Richmond’s Female Humane Association, Male Orphan Asylum, and St. Joseph Female Orphan Asylum before she departed the city to continue her American tour. Fond of her exuberant audience, Lind hoped to return someday.

Mackenzie, Jenny Lind, n.d., Courtesy of the New York Public Library; Programme and ticket for M’lle Jenny Lind’s Concert, December 20, 1850, Courtesy of The Valentine