Ida Aalberg

Ida Aalberg

Ida Emilia Aalberg (born December 4, 1857 in Janakkala , Finland , † January 17, 1915 in Saint Petersburg ) was a Finnish actress . She was regarded as the Duse of the North , gave the characters she played a spirited fullness of life and was a big star of Finnish theater in her time.

Life

Ida Aalberg, who came from a modest background, was a daughter of the railway worker Antti Ahlberg and Agneta Charlotta Lindroos. She began her acting career in 1874 at the Finnish Theater ( Suomalainen Teatteri ) in Helsinki . In her first years she played minor roles on the Helsinki stage, but in 1877 her acclaimed appearance in a Hungarian play attracted greater public interest for the first time. In 1878 and 1880 she studied drama with the German actress Marie Seebach in Dresden . She learned German and a declamatory style that she later retained to a certain extent. In the summer of 1880 she went on tour via Munich and Vienna to Budapest , where she celebrated her first international success with her appearances in front of the Hungarian audience. In the same year she achieved her definitive breakthrough at the Finnish Theater by impersonating Nora in Henrik Ibsen's play Nora or a Puppet's House .

As a result, Aalberg became one of Finland's leading actresses and increased her artistic talent in both the dramatic and comedic fields. She therefore became a favorite actress of Kaarlo Bergbom , the director of the Finnish Theater, and achieved lasting fame through appearances in numerous Finnish premieres of classics. She also belonged to the circle of reformers of the Finnish national theater movement in the epoch of naturalism . In 1883, however, she left the Helsinki stage and sought to start a successful career abroad. In 1883/84 she went on a long study trip to Paris and then gave guest performances in Scandinavian countries. So she played in 1885 at the Royal Theater of Stockholm , the Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet , was a Swedish-language interpretation of Nora in Christiania (now Oslo hailed) and then entered 1885/86 in Copenhagen on.

In 1887 Aalberg married a Finnish nationalist, the lawyer and politician Lauri Kivekäs (1852-1893). From 1887 to 1889 she worked much more frequently at the Finnish Theater in Germany, where she played new roles such as Schiller's Maiden of Orleans or Victorien Sardous Cyprienne . In Berlin she met the Austrian actor Josef Kainz and appeared at his side in 1890 as Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet . However, her stay in Berlin was clouded by health and marital problems. The early 1890s represented a difficult phase in her life, as she was alienated from the Finnish theater due to her frequent foreign tours and, despite some successes on this stage - including her portrayal of the leading role of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler - was exposed to increased criticism. Her husband Lauri Kivekäs died in March 1893 and in the same year she gave guest appearances in Finland and Saint Petersburg.

Aalberg went into a second marriage in 1894 with the Baron Alexander von Uexküll-Güldenband (1864-1923). Shortly afterwards she took part in a tour through Scandinavia organized by Harald Molander and was particularly popular as Marguerite Gautier in Alexandre Dumas' d. J. Piece The Lady of the Camellias . At the end of the 1890s, she was unable to practice acting for three years due to illness. In the early 1900s she gave her last long guest appearances, was hailed in Riga , Saint Petersburg and Moscow in 1904/05 and made another guest appearance in Hungary in 1907. After Kaarlo Bergbom's death in 1904, she became increasingly interested in the domestic Finnish theater life and was intensively supported in her work by her husband, who was familiar with this genre.

1909–1911, Aalberg held a leading position as deputy director at the Finnish National Theater, but was unsuccessful in this capacity. In the second year of her leadership role at the National Theater, she therefore only worked as a mime. She celebrated her last triumph with her impersonation of the main role of Eugène Scribes Adrienne Lecouvreur . The termination of her theater contract resulted in a break with this stage for several years, but in 1914 she agreed to celebrate the 40th anniversary of her acting career. She was last in Saint Petersburg and died there suddenly on January 17, 1915 at the age of 57. She was buried at the Hietaniemi Cemetery in Helsinki.

literature

• Hanna Suutela: Aalberg, Ida , in: Suomen Kansallisbiografia , the Finnish national biography

Remarks

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Hanna Suutela: Aalberg, Ida , in: Suomen Kansallisbiografia .