Gertrud Elisabeth Mara (née Schmeling) (23 February 1749 – 20 January 1833) was a German

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...

tic

soprano A soprano () is a type of classical female singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hz to "high A" (A5) = 880&n ...

Life

She was born in

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...

, the daughter of a poor musician, Johann Schmeling. From him she learnt to play the

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

, and while still a child, her playing at the fair at Frankfurt was so remarkable that money was collected to provide for her. She was helped by influential friends, and studied under

Johann Adam Hiller Johann Adam Hiller (25 December 1728, in Wendisch-Ossig, Saxony – 16 June 1804, in Leipzig) was a German composer, conductor and writer on music, regarded as the creator of the Singspiel, an early form of German opera. In many of these operas ...

in Leipzig for five years, alongside

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

, proving to be endowed with a wonderful soprano voice. She began to sing in public in 1771, and was soon recognized as the greatest singer that Germany had produced. She was permanently engaged for the

Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...

n court in Berlin, but her marriage to a debauched

cellist The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G2, D3 ...

named Mara created difficulties, and in 1780 she was released. After singing in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, Munich and elsewhere, she appeared in Paris in 1782, where her rivalry with the singer

Luísa Todi Luísa Rosa de Aguiar Todi (9 January 1753–1 October 1833) was a popular and successful Portuguese mezzo-soprano opera singer. Early life Luísa Todi was born Luísa Rosa de Aguiar on 9 January 1753 in Setúbal, Portugal. In 1765, her family m ...

split the public into ''Todists'' and ''Maratists''. In 1784 she went to London and continued to appear there with great success, with visits at intervals to Italy and to Paris till 1802, when for some years she retired to Russia, where she lost her fortune at the time of the French invasion. She visited England again in 1819, but then abandoned the stage. She went to

Livonia Livonia ( liv, Līvõmō, et, Liivimaa, fi, Liivinmaa, German and Scandinavian languages: ', archaic German: ''Liefland'', nl, Lijfland, Latvian and lt, Livonija, pl, Inflanty, archaic English: ''Livland'', ''Liwlandia''; russian: Ли ...

, where she became a music teacher in

Reval Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju ''m ...

, and died there in 1833 in extreme poverty; she was buried at

Kopli cemetery The Kopli cemetery (german: Friedhof von Ziegelskoppel or ; et, Kopli kalmistu) was Estonia's largest Lutheran Baltic German cemetery, located in the suburb of Kopli in Tallinn. It contained thousands of graves of prominent citizens of Tallinn ...

References

"Elisabeth Mara"
'' Brockhaus Conversations-Lexikon'', vol. 3, pp. 59–62, Amsterdam 1809 * * ;Further Reading *

External links

Biography (in French)

Portraits on the National Portrait Gallery site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mara, Gertrud Elisabeth 1749 births 1833 deaths Musicians from Kassel German sopranos 18th-century German women opera singers People from the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel 19th-century German women opera singers