Corona Schröter

Corona Elisabeth Wilhelmine Schröter (14 January 1751 – 23 August 1802) was a German musician best known as a singer. She also composed songs, setting texts by Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to music.

Schröter was born in Guben. In her early years she studied many instruments, which included the keyboard and guitar. Her father, Johann Friedrich Schröter, an oboist, was her first teacher, who also taught his three other children music. Her brothers, Johann Samuel and Johann Heinrich, were a pianist and a violinist respectively, and her sister, Marie Henriette, was also a singer. While she received early musical training which contributed to her skill in performance and composition, Corona's early vocal training was damaging to her singing voice.

When she was thirteen, Schröter and her family moved to Leipzig. It was there that she caught the attention of composer Johann Adam Hiller (it is thought that Hiller's wife was Corona's godmother). Hiller, an operatic and singspiel composer, had become seriously frustrated with the inadequate education offered to women. To remedy this, in 1771 Hiller opened his own school. In this coeducational setting, students learned a wide variety of musical subjects, including solfège, diction, technique, Italian, and the keyboard. Schröter flourished as a singer, and benefited from the non-damaging technique she learned. Corona was a powerful performer, but was often compared to her fellow student and rival, Gertrud Schmeling (Madame Mara) in Hiller's Grosse Konzerte series. Schröter's voice was not as powerful as Schmeling's, due to her poor early training. However, she had an intensity which her admirers considered to be unrivaled.

During her time at Hiller's school, Schröter became good friends with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and when he moved to Weimar in 1775 he brought her along as a court singer for Duchess Anna Amalia. She first performed in the court on 23 November 1776. However, while she was employed as a singer, Corona became involved with the amateur court theatre, performing in at least eighteen productions, many of which were written by Goethe himself. Corona and Goethe collaborated on many of his most popular plays. On a few occasions, he starred opposite her, as in the performance of his play Iphigenie auf Tauris in 1779. Goethe's singspiel Die Fischerin was especially important to Schröter. She not only starred in the leading role of Dortchen, but composed incidental music for the play, including the famous opening song Der Erlkönig, which is quite different from the version composed by Franz Schubert over 30 years later - unsurprisingly, Schröter's version is closer to the early Classical era lied tradition in the style of Zelter than to the Romantic version of Schubert. Corona also starred in Goethe's drama Proserpina in which she drew crowds for this "virtuosic solo work."

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