Wheat-Belt Messiah
Alma Swensson was the prim, capable wife of a Lutheran schoolman in the little Swedish-American town of Lindsborg, Kans. (pop. 2,004). Alma Swensson loved Handel's oratorio, The Messiah, decided that her Swedish neighbors should hear it too. So she sent for the music, gathered a chorus of young people from the surrounding towns and farms, rehearsed them and let the welkin ring. That was in 1882.
Mrs. Swensson's sacred musical was such a success that it went on tour, in lumber wagons along dusty Kansas roads, to the neighboring towns of...