Charlotta Seuerling

Charlotta Seuerling
Born	1782 or 1784 Sweden or Finland
Died	1828 (age c. 46 or 44) Sweden
Residence	Sweden, Finland, Russia
Other names	Antoinetta Charlotta Seuerling, Charlotte Seuerling, Charlotta Seijerling, Antonia Charlotta Seyerling, "The Blind Song Maiden"
Occupation	Singer, harpsichordist, poet, actress, inventor, and also had a position at the Institute for the blind in St. Petersburg
Known for	Author of "Sång i en melankolisk stund", blind musician

Charlotta Antonia "Charlotte Antoinette" Seuerling (1782/84 – 25 September 1828), was a blind Swedish concert singer, harpsichordist, composer and poet, known as "The Blind Song-Maiden". She was active in Sweden, Finland and Russia. Her last name is also spelled as Seijerling and Seyerling. Her first name was Charlotta Antoinetta (or Antonia), but in the French fashion of the time, she was often called Charlotte Antoinette. She was the author of the popular song "Sång i en melankolisk stund".

Charlotta Seuerling was the daughter of Carl Gottfried Seuerling and Margareta Seuerling, actors and directors of a travelling theatre company. She became blind at the age of four due to an incompetent smallpox vaccination. Four years later, at the age of eight, she contracted smallpox, and the scars made people consider her ugly, which made her shy.

As a child, she contributed to the household by singing songs she had composed herself to the music of the harp in her parents' theatre. She was widely advertised as a wonder: the singing and music-making blind child. She also played the guitar. Her father was very ambitious and upheld a high standard in the plays at his theatre company, often performing famous plays from the continent, such as plays by Shakespeare. Her mother was a good actress who became the first Swedish speaking Julia in Romeo and Juliet in Norrköping in 1776. They toured in both Sweden and Finland, and even performed at the Swedish court on at least one occasion. They were popular among the public, but often had financial difficulties and problems with irregular staff - during periods of staff-shortage they were forced to use dolls on stage. Charlotta's sister Carolina Fredrika Seuerling was also an actress, but she married a vicar in 1789 and retired.

After the death of her father in 1795, her mother took sole charge of the theatre and moved to Finland, where the competition was small, to tour as the director of her troupe. She sent her daughter to to have an eye-operation by the famous doctors Rislachi and af Bjerkèn, that was promised to give her eyesight back. The operation, however, failed, and as Seuerling did not have the money to join her mother in Finland. She was thereby forced to stay in a boardinghouse for poor women.

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