Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

1850. Providence, Fall River swept up in 'Lindimania' craze

On Sept. 30, 1850, just before 9 p.m., a spectacular meteor exploded in the northeastern skies, "a heavy mass of light, which seemed to be agitated and billowy," The Providence Journal reported two days later. "The streak of light, in the mean time, writhed and twisted like the folds of a serpent." The celestial light show dominated the night sky for five minutes, and shimmering remnants lingered 20 minutes.

A Brown University astronomer chalked it up as a remarkable example of a fairly common event.

But the Boston Evening Journal, as reported in the Oct. 3 Providence Journal, offered a different explanation.

"Just at the moment of the phenomenon Jenny Lind was looking through a telescope at the Cambridge Observatory," one Journal quoted the other. "The instant that her eye touched the instrument, the whole heavens flashed. That the meteor blazed in her honor nobody doubts."

Jenny Lind, the so-called Swedish Nightingale, was making her first concert tour of America in the fall of 1850. The Northeast was caught in the grips of what newspaper editors termed "Lindimania," more than a century before other singers from Europe would touch off Beatlemania.

Like the lads from Liverpool, Lind's first U.S. public appearance was in New York City, where crowds gathered just for a chance at tickets selling for between $5 and $9, which would be $112 to $202 in 2004 dollars. Lind's tour was underwritten by famed showman P.T. Barnum.

Journal files

Swedish soprano Jenny Lind performed in Providence during her first American concert tour in 1850. An enthralled reviewer wrote "Like the Lark, she sings sweeter the higher she soars."

The Providence Journal reported on her concerts in New York, her travels through Fall River to Boston, and then, on Sept. 30, 1850, this surprise announcement:

"Our musical readers, and that we suppose includes all of them when Jenny Lind is in question, will be gratified to learn that Mr. Barnum proposes to give a concert in this city next Friday evening."

The Journal's reviewer was enthralled by Lind's concert at Howard Hall on Westminster Street. "Her voice is the purest Soprano. Like the Lark she sings sweeter the higher she soars," The Journal reported on Oct. 9, 1850. "Her singing is a glowing atmosphere. The listener breathes it and lives in it."