Wolter, Charlotte

(1834-1897)

   Actress. Wolter became the Vienna Burgtheater 's leading tragedienne in the mid-1860s, playing female leads in several plays by Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and Franz Grillparzer. She maintained her eminence through the 1870s, expanding her repertoire to include leading roles in French salon dramas by Eugène Scribe, Alexandre Dumas fils, and Victorien Sardou; critics considered her particularly effective in the title role of Scribe's Adrienne Lecou-vreur. She enjoyed her most popular success as Jane Eyre in Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer's adaptation of the novel Jane Eyre, titled Die Waise von Lowood(The Orphan of Lowood). A splendid 1875 painting by Hans Makart depicting Wolter as the Roman emperor Claudius's doomed actress-wife Messalina still hangs in the Historical Museum of Vienna.

   Adolf Wilbrandt wrote Arria und Messalina especially for her in 1874, and it too was an audience favorite—though many critics were divided in their judgment. They accused Wolter of bringing an overburdened "natural" feel to such parts, especially when she screamed in passion. Those outbursts came to be known as Wolterschreie and were a familiar trademark of her performances; audiences looked forward to them and applauded wildly when they occurred in her portrayals of Lady Macbeth, Phèdre, Sappho, and Mary Stuart. The screams were evidence of the intensity she brought to her characterizations, a tendency she learned at the Viktoria Theater in Berlin, where she began her career. The high point of her work there was as Hermione in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, a play curiously and inexplicably popular among the Germans in the 19th century. Her husband designed and built nearly all her costumes; she was buried in one of them, built for her when she played the title role in Goethe's Iphegenia.