Helena Modjeska
Helena Helena Misel Modrzejewska actually Jadwiga, married Chłapowska ( born October 12, 1840 in Krakow, † April 8, 1909 in Newport Beach, California, USA) was a Polish actress.
Life
Helena Modrzejewska was one of the most important Polish actresses of the 19th century. Especially by their Shakespearean roles they made the English classics on Polish stages popular. She played the first woman in Poland roles as Ophelia in Hamlet or Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. The extremely popular actress was one of the most beautiful women of her era. 1863, she debuted at the theater in Lviv. In 1865 she tried to be engaged in Vienna, but what you due to their weak knowledge of German was not successful. Back in Poland she played mainly at the theaters in Krakow, Poznan, Krynica -Zdrój and Warsaw. It was the occasion for a scandal in the Russian-occupied Warsaw in the 1870s, when a group of high school students her a bouquet of flowers with a band gave in Polish after a performance in Warsaw. This was the authorities as a patriotic demonstration and the students of the school were referred by pointing out that she could take no other school.
Modrzejewska emigrated in 1876 in the United States. To her group of emigrants who settled in California, Henryk Sienkiewicz belonged, Julian Sypniewski and Łucjan Paprocki. Originally Stanisław Witkiewicz also (father of SI Witkiewicz ) and Adam Chmielowski were planning to emigrate with this group from Poland. The emigrants were farmers in the city of Anaheim. Modrzejewska also dabbled in the United States as an actress and came from then on as Helena Modjeska. She studied hard and finally debuted English at the California Theatre. In 1883 it took the U.S. citizenship and worked in the United States a comparable status as a phenomenal actress as in their home.
In 1893 she was invited to the World Women's Congress in Chicago, where she reported on the situation of women in Poland under Russian and Prussian rule. Your critical comments meant that she was forbidden to enter Russian territory. Nevertheless, she traveled for the last time 1902/1903 to Poland and performed in theaters in Lviv, Poznan and Krakow. On May 2, 1905 organized by the Metropolitan Opera in New York City at the initiative of Ignacy Paderewski a gala evening in her honor. They then went on a two -year tour, then to finally retire as an actress. Every now and then she went then to charity events, but no longer in theater productions. Overall, they brought it to a repertoire of 260 roles. She wrote after her withdrawal her memoirs in English, which were published after her death in 1910 in the United States. The traditional Stary Teatr in Krakow bears her name.
Helena Modrzejewska is the mother of the famous in the U.S. bridge engineer Ralph Modjeski.