Gertrud Elisabeth Mara

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Gertrud Elisabeth Mara
Gertrud Elisabeth Mara, by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Born	(1749-02-23)23 February 1749 Kassel
Died	20 January 1833(1833-01-20) (aged 83) Livonia
Nationality	German
Occupation	operatic soprano.

Gertrud Elisabeth Mara [née Schmeling] (23 February 1749 – 20 January 1833) was a German operatic soprano.

Life

She was born in Kassel, the daughter of a poor musician, Johann Schmeling. From him she learnt to play the violin, 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 in Leipzig for five years, alongside Corona Schröter, 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 Prussian court in Berlin, but her marriage to a debauched celllist named Mara created difficulties, and in 1780 she was released. After singing in Vienna, Munich and elsewhere, she appeared in Paris in 1782, where her rivalry with the singer Luísa Todi 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, where she became a music teacher in Reval, and died there in 1833 in extreme poverty; she was buried at Kopli cemetery.

References

"Elisabeth Mara", Brockhaus Conversations-Lexikon, vol. 3, pp. 59–62, Amsterdam 1809
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Thurston, H. T.; Moore, F., eds. (1905). "^{article name needed}". New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Elisabeth Mara.

Authority control	WorldCat VIAF: 5194963 LCCN: n96076224 ISNI: 0000 0000 8084 8538 GND: 118730770 BNF: cb14801413s

Persondata
Name	Mara, Gertrud Elisabeth
Alternative names
Short description	German operatic soprano
Date of birth	23 February 1749
Place of birth	Kassel, Germany
Date of death	20 January 1833
Place of death	Reval, Estonia

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