Friederike Sophie Seyler
Sophie Friederike Seyler, formerly Sophie Friederike Hensel (* 1737 or 1738 in Dresden, † November 22, 1789 in Schleswig; born Sparmann, married Hensel and later Seyler ) was a German actress. She was considered the most famous German actress in the second half of the 18th century. Your Singspiel Huon and Amande served as the basis of the libretto for The Magic Flute.
Life
Sophie Friederike Hensel was born in Dresden, the only child of the physician Dr. Johann Wilhelm saving man and his wife Luise Catharina Poeppelmann. She was the granddaughter of Daniel Pöppelmann. Her parents divorced when Sophie was 11 years old. As her mother entered a pen, Sophie grew up with an uncle, who is said to have been treated so poorly that they initially, and later fled to other relatives to the stage.
From 1754 she was a member of the Schuch 's Society in Gdansk and Wroclaw, where a year later the actor Johann Gottlieb Hensel married, which they already broke up again in 1759. They hovered for some time between Vienna, Frankfurt and Hildburghausen and even toyed with the idea of giving up acting because of her failing health. Finally, she became a member of the Ackermann 's company in Hamburg and was probably involved in the cleavage and the formation of the Hamburg National Theatre, where she shone as the first tragic actress.
After the end of the Hamburg National Theatre in 1769 and a new division of the Ackermann society, she moved with the " Seylerschen society", which was led by her lover Abel Seyler, from stage to stage. In 1787 she settled finally with Seyler, whom she had married in 1772, in Schleswig, where he became head of the court theater, and until her death in 1789 ( according to some sources in 1790 ) stood on the stage. Her husband was the father of the Hamburg banker Ludwig Erdwin Seyler, chef and co-owner of Berenberg Bank, and Sophie Seyler (1762-1833) who in 1781 married the poet Johann Anton Leisewitz.
Importance
Sophie Friederike Hensel was next to Friederike Caroline Neuber as the most significant actress of her time who mastered the different characters, but especially in passionate, tragic roles shone like Clytemnestra, Medea or Hamlet's mother. A contemporary engraving of the theater calendar shows it as little beautiful but imposing appearance.
The poet Gotthold Ephraim Lessing called Sophie Friederike Hensel one of the best German actresses and mentioned it in his Hamburg Dramaturgy several times. He praised the ease and precision of their declamations, which escaped not a false note in the most obscure verse, and her refined game. Particularly impressed him, as she mastered the title role in his play Miss Sara Sampson, the death scene. He wrote of her: " No word falls out of their mouth to the ground. What she says she has not learned, it comes out of her own head, out of her own heart. You like to talk, or they may not speak, their game goes on uninterrupted. "
In addition, however, " Hensel " was also considered extremely difficult actress, who responded offended at the slightest criticism and caused by their large vanity and addiction role for voltages.
In addition to her acting, she also wrote several stage plays. Your drama "Abduction, or the tender mother " - written after a novel by the Irish writer Frances Sheridan - was often performed in the 1770's. It took the popular theme of " persecuted innocence ", but focused less on dramatic scenes between abductees and kidnappers, and more on the turmoil in the family of abductees, especially the herschsüchtige mother and her black -and-white morality.
In addition, Hensel wrote the libretto for a romantic musical comedy called " Huon and Amande ", the end of the 18th century was a crowd puller in Hamburg. Even the libretto of the opera composed by Paul Wranitzky " Oberon " was a plagiarism of Hensel's text by the Viennese actor Karl Ludwig Giesecke.
Works
- The family in the country (1770 )
- The Abduction or The tender mother ( 1772)
- Huon and Amande (1789 )