Henriette Widerberg

Henriette Sophie Widerberg (3 September 1796 – 3 April 1872) was a Swedish opera singer (soprano) and memoirist. She was an elite member of the Royal Swedish Opera and its prima donna for over twenty years. She was appointed Hovsångare in 1837.

She was the first woman in Sweden to publish her own memoirs during her own lifetime. Her book En Skådespelerskas Minnen: Sjelfbiografi (Memories of an Actress: an Autobiography) was published in two parts in 1850–51, and republished in 1924.

Life

Early life

Henriette Widerberg was the daughter of the actor Andreas Widerberg and the actress Anna Catharina Widebäck. Her father was originally the star actor and later director of Comediehuset in Gothenburg, where her parents met and married the same night in 1787 of which they played onstage lovers. The family moved to Stockholm when her father was employed at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, where he became an elite actor and admired for his beauty and "male figure".

Henriette Widerberg was all active on stage early on. Described as a beautiful child, her mother arranged for her stage career when she was very young, in order for her to contribute to the household, which was in a poor financial state after the death of her father. Widerberg described in her memoirs how she played with dolls when her mother received gifts from her (Henriette's) adult male admirers.

She was enrolled in the Royal Dramatic Training Academy in 1807, where she was tutored by Sofia Lovisa Gråå in the French tradition of Anne Marie Milan Desguillons. Between 1810 and 1817, she was active first in the theater of Isaac de Broen in Djurgårdsteatern, and then in the travelling theater of Johan Anton Lindqvist, which performed in Comediehuset in Gothenburg. During her tenure in Gothenburg, she was given very good reviews and popularity as a singer.

Career at the Royal Opera

On 24 August 1817, Henriette Widerberg made her debut at the Royal Swedish Opera as Laura in the opéra-comique Léon ou Le Château de Monténéro by Nicolas Dalayrac, a debut which was reviewed as "touching to a degree which made the audience melt to tears."

After the retirement of Jeanette Wässelius three years later, she took over her roles and became the prima donna of the Swedish Opera stage for about twenty years onward. Her position as was reflected by her salary. She was given a salary of 1600 riksdaler, an amount surpassing any other woman in the Royal Theatres (Royal Swedish Opera and Royal Dramatic Theatre): as comparison, the minimum salary of a female singer or actress was 200, and the highest paid male elite colleague was given 1800, an amount only slightly higher than hers. Reportedly, she did not bother to read notes, but instead asked the orchestra to sing and play her part for her, and after having heard her part once, regardless of instrument used, she was able to memorize it and perform. Henriette Widerberg described in her memoirs an incident in which her small children once saw her act in the death scene of Romeo and Juliet and started to cry "Mother is dead, mother is dead!" because they thought it was real.

Reportedly, Henriette Widerberg had a poor sense of financial affairs and mismanaged her economy, a fact which was to prove disastrous when her career at the Royal Opera was discontinued and she no longer had the protection of her status there.

Later life

Henriette Widerberg was dismissed from her position at the Royal Swedish Opera after the 1836–37 season. The reason was her increasing behavior of refusing to play parts she did not like or cancel performances she did not like to participate in, traits that had been accepted in the beginning of her career, but had by 1835 increased to such an extent that the opera management came in to open conflict with Widerberg. Her dismissal was not liked by her admirers in the audience, who demanded her return, but the differences between Widerberg and the management could not be solved and neither part could agree to a new contract. Her popularity, however, ensured her activity as a guest artist for the first years. She was active as a guest performer at the Royal Opera in the 1838–39 season and the 1839–40 season, but failed to be given a new contract and made her final performance at the Royal Opera as a guest artist in June 1840, after which she unsuccessfully tried to secure employment in Germany.

Between 1842 and 1844, she was engaged at the Mindre teatern where she, according to Aftonbladet, performed with the same talent previously admired at the Royal Opera. The life of Henriette Widerberg after her retirement from the Royal Opera was however marred by a spiral of deteriorating financial troubles. Her financial situation and her difficulty in managing her economy had been hard also during her tenure at the Royal Opera, but she had been protected by her status and position there, and after her retirement, she was pressed by her creditors and unable to find a solution to pay her debts. During her employment at the Mindre teatern, she was heavily indebted to a moneylender, and in turn placed her employer, the theater manager Anders Lindeberg who had agreed to become her security, in heavy debt. After her dismissal from the Mindre teatern in 1844, the playwright August Blanche described how the "poor discarded singer" lived with her brother, the alcoholic former leader of a travelling theater Fredrik Julius Widerberg, making a living selling soap and how both of them was only saved from "utter misery" by the charity of Emilie Högquist. Widerberg described her plans of opening an inn, and it seem as though she did in 1848, though nothing more is known of this activity.

In 1850–51, she published her memoirs, the first memoirs published by a Swedish woman during her own lifetime and published, as she stated, in the hope that it would be possible for her to support her children by any income from it. In 1859, her small pension from the royal opera was enlarged, but she reportedly died in poverty.