The ninety-three concerts under Barnum’s management had yielded a total
of $712,161.34 in a period of nine months. Of this amount Jenny Lind
received from Barnum, besides all her expenses, $208,675.09 as her
share of the proceeds, including her guaranteed stipend of $1,000 per
concert. She refunded to Barnum $32,000 to break the contract after the
ninety-three concerts, so that her net profit from the tour totaled
$176,675.09. Barnum’s gross receipts, after paying Jenny Lind her
share, were $535,486.25. He never printed what proportion of this was
net profit, but his expenses probably reached $350,000.
The Jenny Lind tour, besides the financial profit to the two principals
and the beneficial effect on Barnum’s prestige and Jenny Lind’s
popularity, had an effect of great importance on the history of music
in the United States. No star in her ascendancy had ventured into
the barbarous American woods in search of gold, but the success of
Jenny Lind, which was so much greater financially and emotionally
than any of her European triumphs, opened the eyes of other musical
celebrities to possibilities in an American tour; it also awakened
American impresarios to the opportunities in this country. Grisi and
Mario, who were Europe’s favorites before the Jenny Lind vogue, made
plans to visit the United States, and Johanna Wagner at one time
entertained that intention. Henriette Sontag visited New York when
Jenny Lind was preparing to leave. She enjoyed some success here, due
in part to her beauty and charming manner, as well as to her voice, but
she did not create a Jenny Lind furor. At the time when Mme. Sontag
visited the United States, Von Bülow called her in compliment to her
beauty, “a forty-eight-year-old soubrette.” She had many admirers in
Europe, and some of these were personal. Lord Clanwilliam, British
Ambassador at Berlin, was so persistent in his unwelcome attentions to
Mme. Sontag that he was called “Lord Montag following Sontag.” After
Barnum retired, Le Grand Smith became an impresario in his own name and
brought Mme. Alboni to this country in 1852. Neither of these stars
enjoyed the success of Jenny Lind, for, aside from any difference in
the qualities of their voices, it was well known that young men in
Europe drank champagne from Henriette Sontag’s slipper, and Alboni’s
lovers were almost as many as Jenny Lind’s charities: church has always
been more popular in America than burlesque.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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