Charlotte Eckerman

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"Mademoiselle Charlotte Eckerman" (1784) painted by Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller.
"Mademoiselle Charlotte Eckerman" (1784) painted by Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller.

Charlotte (Charlotta) Beata Eckerman, 1759-16 January in Stockholm 1790, was a Swedish opera singer and actor. She belonged to the first generation of the newly founded national stage. She was also a very well known courtesan during the Gustavian era.

[edit] Biography

The daughter of a cavalry captain of the Royal court, Bengt Edvard Eckerman, and the journalist Catharina Ahlgren, she was hired as a singer and an actor at the Royal Swedish Opera in Bollhuset in Stockholm in 1774, and were gicen singing lessons. Originally hired as a member of the choir, she soon rose to be one of the more popular actors when she had to replace Elisabeth Olin as Mechtild in Birger jarl, a part in which she made success, and she was given a contract in 1776.

"Mamsell Eckerman" was considered one of the better talents there, and sometimes replaced the great prima donna Elisabeth Olin. During attempts to play speaking theatre, Charlotte Eckerman and Ulrica Rosenlund belonged to the members of the staff in the first national Opera, who proved their talent not only as singers, but also as actors in talking parts, in theatrical performances that were not otherwise considered as successes.

Charlotta Eckerman was widely regarded as a courtesan, and was at one point one of the many mistresses of the king's brother duke Charles, the future Charles XIII of Sweden.

In 1781, Eckerman became involved in a conflict with the king, Gustav III of Sweden. Eckerman was disliked by the king, as it was said, because "she did not admire him", and because she had a talent for caricatureing his ideals. When her affair with the king's brother ended and she could no longer count on his protection, the king arranged for her dismissal from the Opera and had her banished from Drottningholm. Furthermore, he ordered Baron Sparre, the governor of the city of Stockholm, to have her arrested and sent to jail. As a reason, he claimed that she had given birth to a child and murdered it in secret, and that she had taken part in the spreading of rumours regarding the legitimacy of the crown prince, the future Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden. During these years, they were many rumors regarding the great scandal of the legitimacy of the crown prince's birth, claiming that he was really the child of the stable master Munck: the rumors claimed the king had ordered Munck to impregnate the queen, which were spread by the king's own mother, Louisa Ulrika of Prussia, rumors that increased when Munck were given gifts by the king and the queen. Sparre, aware of the king's dislike of Eckerman, interrogated her, and she denied all accusations, pointing out the king's page, De Besche, who had mentioned the dubious gifts of the royal couple to Munck.

Sparre refused to arrest her, and pointed out that it was against Swedish law for a king to threaten the freedom of a citizen without a legal verdict from a court. The whole affair ended in silence; Eckerman was not sent to jail, and the king did not mention it further. After his, she spend several years abroad before she returned to Stockholm, were she died.

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