Herta Elviste | |
---|---|
Born |
Herta Marianne Brandt 12 June 1923 Pärnu-Jaagupi, Estonia |
Died | 29 October 2015 Halinga, Estonia |
(aged 92)
Nationality | Estonian |
Other names | Herta Loit Herta Eelmäe |
Occupation | Actress |
Years active | 1940-2010 |
Spouse(s) | Uno Loit (divorced) Lembit Eelmäe (1958-2009; his death) |
Children | 2 |
Herta Elviste (12 June 1923 - 29 October 2015), was an Estonian stage, film and television actress and assistant theatre director whose career spanned nearly seventy years.
Herta Elviste was born Herta Marianne Brandt to Aleksander Brandt and Aglaida Brandt (née Madisson) in the small borough of Pärnu-Jaagupi in Pärnu County. She was the youngest of three siblings; the oldest, a sister named Leida, and a brother named Meinhard who died in 1918. The family would later change their surname to the more Estonian sounding Elviste.
She attended schools in Pärnu-Jaagupi and from 1939 until 1942 she studied ballet at the Elsa Putnin Pärnu ballet studio.
Herta Elviste began her stage career as an actress with an engagement at the Endla Theatre in Pärnu in 1940 at age seventeen until 1950, and again, from 1952 until 1958. Memorable roles of the period have been in productions of works by such authors and playwrights as: Carlo Goldoni, Leo Tolstoy, Hella Wuolijoki, Henrik Ibsen, Anton Hansen Tammsaare and D. L. Coburn.
After her engagement at the Endla Theatre ended, she joined the Vanemuine theatre in Tartu in 1958, making her stage debut at the theatre in the role of Masha in a production of Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters in 1959. She would remain engaged at the theatre for over fifty years; still engaged as a performer at the time of her death. Her final performance onstage at the Vanemuine was as the role of Grandmother in a production of Ödön von Horváth's Tales from the Vienna Woods in 2009. During her later years, colleagues and the media would refer to Elviste simply as the "Grand Old Lady."