“When Jenny Lind Came to Town”

Jenny Lind was a “rock star” long before the term was even coined.

“The Swedish Nightingale” is judged to have been the greatest soprano singer of the 19th Century. Her nickname was as well known in her day as “The King” for Elvis Presley or “The Fab Four” for the Beatles are in ours. And once upon a time, 161 years ago, she performed in our very own Madison, Indiana.

Now, that unique event will be recalled in a new play, “When Jenny Lind Came to Town,” to be presented Friday, Oct. 12, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, Oct. 14, at 3 p.m., at the Fitzgibbon Recital Hall at the Lynn Center for Fine Arts, Hanover College. Adult admission is $12.50 for advance tickets, $15 at the door. Senior citizens age 65 and over, and Hanover College, staff and students’ tickets are $10 advanced, $12 at the door. People high school age and younger will be admitted for $5. To order advance tickets, call (812) 265-6296; or (502) 633-9100.

The musical, written and produced by Mike Smith, is a fictionalized version of how a real-life young Madisonian named Billy Wilson scored a huge coup in persuading Lind’s American manager, P.T. Barnum, to bring her to Madison for a concert — in a porkhouse which was still in use! Madison was then a huge pork-packing center, you see.

Pat Whitney of Madison is co-producer of the play; her husband, Herb Whitney, will play the role of  the distinguished Kentucky Senator Henry Clay.

Pat Whitney provided information and the handbill displayed on this page, for the story. She said that although the cast is principally from the Louisville area, performers from Madison are also being sought, in considerable numbers.

“We need local actors!” she emphasized. “We’re putting out a call for 12 to 20 adults, preferably with some acting/singing experience, but it’s not mandatory. Also, we need a dozen to two dozen local children from elementary through high school age, preferably with singing, acting or dance background.”

Whitney urged anyone interested to e-mail her at azwriter65@frontier.com , or to call (812) 265-6296 for more information.

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Who was Jenny Lind? She was born in 1820 in Stockholm, Sweden, and was christened Joanna Maria Lind. She began to sing on stage when she was just 10 years old, and by the age of 17 she was a favorite performer in the Swedish Royal Opera. Within three more years she was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and court singer to the King of Sweden. During the next decade, she became renowned for her magnificent, two-full-octave soprano all over Europe, performing in hundreds of theaters and concert halls. She became such a “star,” to use another 20th Century term, that crowds of her fans sometimes rioted in frenzied struggles to see who could seize highly-prized tickets to hear her sing.

She was not considered especially attractive by 19th Century standards, but she had a number of suitors, including Felix Mendelssohn, Frederic Chopin, and Hans Christian Andersen. But she ultimately married German musician Otto Goldschmidt while in America in 1852.

It was in 1849 that the famed American entrepreneur and museum owner P.T. Barnum conceived the idea of Jenny Lind’s going on a highly publicized singing tour around the United States and Cuba. He mortgaged everything he owned to raise the funds necessary — $187,500, a fortune in 1849 dollars — to persuade Lind to perform in up to 100 venues in America and the Caribbean.

Lind having agreed to Barnum’s proposal, she came to America and began her tour in September, 1850. By early April, 1851, her concert tour had reached Louisville, Kentucky, 50 miles downriver from the dirty, bar-brawling, bustling hog market of Madison, Indiana.

Enter Billy Wilson (who was a real person, by the way). He was a Madison porkhouse worker who was in love with an elementary school teacher named Mary Fremont. But her parents disapproved of Mary’s suitor, and it appeared that marriage was just not in their future.

But Wilson had a dream: To have the world-renowned Swedish Nightingale sing in his own home town, thus bringing recognition and status to Madison; and, on a more personal basis, to persuade Mary’s parents that he was, indeed, a worthy husband for their daughter. Wilson’s efforts to persuade Lind and Barnum to agree to his plan, are a central theme of Smith’s play. It not only tells of the Lind concert, but is a beautiful love story, including majestic songs of the period.

Mike Smith is a veteran journalist and an avid Jenny Lind collector. He will hold a silent auction of authentic items from his collection at the Friday Hanover production, with the winners announced at the intermission during the Sunday matinee.

Besides Wilson, Fremont, Barnum, and, of course, Jenny Lind, other leading characters in the play are Josephine Ahmansen, the woman who watched over and cared for Lind (Ahmansen will serve as narrator at times); Giovanni Belletti, Italian tenor who accompanied Lind to America; Sen. Clay; General Tom Thumb, Barnum’s famous “little man”; and the chorus/ensemble made up of musical back-ups and townspeople.

The play will be staged in two acts and nine scenes, starting with Billy Wilson’s telling Mary Fremont about his “plan,” through the audience’s meeting Barnum, Belletti and Ahmansen, the concert at Mozart Hall in Louisville, the first appearances of Clay and Jenny Lind, Wilson’s revealing his plan to some Madison residents, their turning of the porkhouse at what is now Mulberry and East First streets into a theater in two days of super-human efforts with scrubbing, cleaning, whitewashing and decorating; the arrival of the Ben Franklin steamboat at the Madison wharf to a greeting from thousands of Madisonians; and the “Grand Finale”, Lind’s concert.