Ira Aldridge

Ira Aldridge ( born July 24, 1807 in New York; † August 7, 1867 in Łódź, Poland ) was one of the most important African-American actor of his time.

Aldridge should be a missionary like his father and went to Glasgow for 1825. One already in New York awakened in him a tendency to stage following, he made his debut in 1826 at a small theater in London as Othello, which was part of the sequence adjacent to the Macbeth, Richard III. , Shylock, Mohr in " FIESCO " among other things, its popular games.

Until 1852 Aldridge played in the provincial towns of Great Britain, undertook it with headed a company of actors a trip to the mainland, Amsterdam, Brussels, Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna, Pest, Königsberg visited etc. and found everywhere great acclaim. In 1857 he was engaged as a member of the Covent Garden, but there was no response, and then went to Saint Petersburg and Moscow, then to Poland and Hungary, and repeated after Germany.

He joined in 1866 in France and then traveled back to Russia, but died on the way to Lodz in Poland August 7, 1867. The game Aldridge remembered in the representation of passionate excitement to the often exaggerated manner of the English actor, but he also knew the softer to bring soul moods admirably expressed.