Definition
Ida Aalberg (1857–1915) was Finland’s leading actress during the creation of the Finnish Theater (later Finnish National Theater) and starred in the first professional Finnish-language production of a complete Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet, in 1881. She played Ophelia in 1884, a role she also performed (in Finnish) in Stockholm opposite Ernesto Rossi (1885). She also played Desdemona (1889), Lady Macbeth (1896), and perhaps most famously, Cleopatra (1896), all directed by Kaarlo Bergbom. In terms of the development of theater in Finland, the first two roles were particularly significant, as they came during a time when the still young FT was trying to prove it could perform the classics of the western canon, including Shakespeare.
Ida Aalberg and Early Finnish-language Shakespeare
Ida Aalberg (1857–1915) ran away from home at the age of 16 to join the Finnish Theater (FT). As Laura-Elina Aho has discussed, she was initially asked to play ingénue roles which were...
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References
Aho, Laura-Elina. 2020. Motherless girls and the orphan myth in the making of nation: The gendered representation of a nation in the repertoire of the Finnish Theater Company, 1872–76. Nineteenth Century Theater and Film 47 (2): 179–208.
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Keinänen, N. (2024). Aalberg, Ida. In: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99378-2_243-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99378-2_243-1
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