Corona Schröter

Corona Elisabeth Wilhelmine Schröter (14 January 1751 – 23 August 1802) was a German actress and musician best known as a singer. She also composed songs, setting texts by Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to music.

Early life Schröter was born in Guben, Holy Roman Empire. In her early years she studied many instruments, which included the keyboard and guitar.

Corona and Goethe worked closely on compositions which were performed in the Weimar theater as well as published for their personal libraries between 1776 and 1782.

When the amateur court theatre was replaced by professional actors in 1783, she continued to sing and act in informal settings. She also began to teach singing and took up writing and art. She formally withdrew from all court performing in 1788. She became friends with Friedrich Schiller during those years, whose poems she later set to music. Unfortunately, these lieder are lost, as are her two dramas, hundreds of arias and duets, and an autobiography given to Goethe in 1778. However, two collections of lieder were published by her, the first in 1786, followed by another in 1794, thus surviving into the present time. The first collection, which contains her rendition of Der Erlkönig from Goethe's play, was more popular than the second, probably due to its simpler nature: the second contained many songs in French and Italian. These two collections are some of the first and largest publications of lieder by a woman. When the first collection was released, Schröter had this to say about her work: I have had to overcome much hesitation before I seriously made the decision to publish a collection of short poems that I have provided with melodies. A certain feeling towards propriety and morality is stamped upon our sex, which does not allow us to appear alone in public, and without an escort: Thus, how can I otherwise present this, my musical work to the public, than with timidity? For the complimentary opinions and the encouragement of a few persons… can easily be biased out of pity. The work of any lady, moreover, will indeed arouse similar pity to some extent in the eyes of other experts.

A review of this first collection said that Schröter's abilities for composing were not equal to her potential. The reviewer felt that the songs had much spirit in them, but were not written in a way that brought this out. He did say that the performances of these pieces were helpful to understanding the depth of them. Ultimately, he blamed this deficiency on her lack of education, a real problem for women in this period of time.

Corona Schröter was also immortalized in other ways. In 1782, during a eulogy for a deceased theatre director, Goethe praised her for her help in shaping theatre in Weimar, and himself. Seven years earlier, a work about theatre history was dedicated to her due to her well-known abilities.

She spent the last eight years of her life teaching acting and singing. However, lung and respiratory problems forced her to move from Leipzig to Ilmenau with her long-time friend Wilhemine Probst in 1801. Her condition was so serious that she never recovered and died there a year later.