Annetta Grodner

Annetta Grodner (or Gradner) was a Ukrainian Jewish singer and actress, the first prima donna in Yiddish theater.

The daughter of a bootmaker in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, she met and married Israel Grodner some time around 1870, when he passed through Kremenchuk in the course of his wanderings as a young Broder singer. Her husband was recruited by Abraham Goldfaden as the first professional Yiddish-language stage actor, but initially Yiddish theater was an entirely male affair. The gender barrier was broken by the teenaged Sara Segal, later famous under the name Sophie Karp. However, Annetta Grodner was the first to play prima donna roles.

Jacob Adler wrote that she was "an actress with the seventh degree of charm" and that her singing voice was "not strong, but melodiousa voice 'with tears in it.' There was always something sweetly sad in her singingeven her gay songs tore at your heart."

Annetta Grodner shared many (though not all) of her husband's wanderings through Europe until his early death in London in 1887.

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Sunday, March 13, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.