Two nights next weekend, a soprano will sit down at a 171-year-old piano inside the last mansion standing from St. Louis's first exclusive residential enclave and sing the same songs that once sent the city into a frenzy over a Swedish singer nobody in America had ever seen perform. The Campbell House Museum at 1508 Locust St. is hosting “A Nightingale Sang: A Historical Program of Victorian Superstar Jenny Lind,” an intimate concert recreating the music and atmosphere of 1851, with only 36 guests admitted per show.
The concerts, scheduled for 7 p.m. Saturday, September 12, and 4 p.m. Sunday, September 13, in the Campbell House parlor, arrive as the museum marks its building's 175th anniversary, according to St. Louis Magazine. Tickets run $100, and availability is limited given the small parlor setting. The program includes selections associated with Jenny Lind's famed tour along with music connected to the Campbell family and their world, the outlet reports.
When Jenny Lind Set St. Louis on Fire
Jenny Lind, known as the Swedish Nightingale, brought her celebrated North American tour to St. Louis in March 1851, arriving via the steamboat Lexington and performing five sold-out concerts at Wyman's Hall on Market Street, according to the Buffalo Reflex. Wyman's Hall once stood across from the courthouse where the Gateway Arch stands today. Demand for seats was so intense that promoter P.T. Barnum auctioned the first ticket for $155 to saloon owner Edward Byron, the outlet notes, and charged a 10-cent fee just to bid, which Barnum donated to local charities — a striking sum in a city where average concert tickets ran $9 to $12 a seat.
St. Louis was flourishing in 1851, per the seed reporting, and the Campbells were among those who attended Jenny Lind's historic appearance in the city. That same year, the Campbell House itself went up as the first residence built in Lucas Place, St. Louis's first private residential enclave, established by siblings James Lucas and Ann Lucas Hunt after the city's 1849 cholera epidemic and great fire, according to NextSTL. Today it stands as the sole surviving mansion from that enclave.
An Irish Fur Trader's Mansion Turned Museum
The home's original buyer, Robert Campbell, was an Irish-born fur trader who made his early fortune trading beaver pelts and buffalo robes with frontiersman Jim Bridger before becoming a prominent St. Louis real estate investor and banker. Campbell and his wife, Virginia, bought the Lucas Place residence in 1854 for $18,000, per the seed account, and the following year purchased a Schomacker and Co. square grand piano for the parlor — Robert Campbell's receipt book records a $475 payment to the company on November 28, 1855.
That Philadelphia-made instrument has remained in the Campbell parlor ever since. Schomacker and Co., founded in Philadelphia in 1838, produced a nearly identical piano for Abraham Lincoln's White House, an instrument now preserved in the collections of the Chicago History Museum, according to the Campbell House Museum's own historical materials. Ahead of the September performances, the family's 1855 piano underwent repair and ongoing maintenance by specialist Matt Sellers of St. Louis Vintage Piano to make the 171-year-old instrument playable again, the museum said on Facebook.
A Modern Soprano Steps Into a Victorian Parlor
Performing on that restored piano will be Angel Azzarra, a dramatic soprano and accomplished recitalist who has sung with Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Opera Lafayette, Detroit Opera, St. Petersburg Opera, Gulfshore Opera, and the Opera Festival of Chicago, per the seed reporting. Azzarra made her Kennedy Center debut in May 2024 as Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy, in Opera Lafayette's modern revival of Jean-Joseph Mouret's 1714 opéra-ballet Les Fêtes de Thalie, a performance the Washington Classical Review praised, with The Washington Post describing her debut as visually vibrant and vocally dazzling.
Beyond the opera stage, Azzarra starred in the 2021 PBS classical music special Once Upon a Winter and produces classical music educational content for her digital platform AngelOpera, which has reached millions of viewers, according to the Bay View Association. Operavore named her to its 40 Under 40 list of superb opera singers, and she has continued to advocate for opera and classical music education through her outreach work.
Preserving a Landmark Beyond the Concert Hall
The Campbell House Museum opened to the public on February 6, 1943, was designated a City of St. Louis Landmark in 1946, and underwent a major restoration completed in 2005 based on a rare 1885 collection of 60 interior photographs, according to Give STL Day. The museum, owned by the nonprofit Campbell House Foundation, completed an accessibility expansion in 2021 that added a street-level entrance, elevator tower, classroom space, and expanded museum store to improve visitor access, NextSTL reported. The house continues to stand as an exceptionally preserved nineteenth-century St. Louis home, the kind of survivor that makes recreating an 1851 parlor concert more than a novelty act — it is a chance to hear the same rooms, and nearly the same piano, that greeted Jenny Lind's admirers 175 years ago.
