Corona Schröter

Corona Elisabeth Wilhelmine Schröter (14 January 1751 – 23 August 1802) was a German actress and musician best known as a singer. She also composed songs, setting texts by Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to music. Early life Schröter was born in Guben, Holy Roman Empire. In her early years she studied many instruments, which included the keyboard and guitar. Corona and Goethe worked closely on compositions which were performed in the Weimar theater as well as published for their personal libraries between 1776 and 1782. When the amateur court theatre was replaced by professional actors in 1783, she continued to sing and act in informal settings. She also began to teach singing and took up writing and art. She formally withdrew from all court performing in 1788. She became friends with Friedrich Schiller during those years, whose poems she later set to music. Unfortunately, these lieder are lost, as are her two dramas, hundreds of arias and duets, and an autobiography given to Goethe in 1778. However, two collections of lieder were published by her, the first in 1786, followed by another in 1794, thus surviving into the present time. The first collection, which con