Goethe und seine Schauspiel-Diva
By Walter Hesse
Weimar's first stage diva looks back from a cloud, with her chambermaid and an archangel for company.
In 13 days
15 September 2026 · 20:00 Uhr
About Goethe und seine Schauspiel-Diva
Two angels on their cloud, the house says: Corona Schröter, the first acting diva Weimar had, and her chambermaid Wilhelmine Probst — with the archangel Gabriel making a third. From up there they look at the town as it is now and at their own beginnings in it, and the evening turns out to be about what a theatrical career is mostly made of: hoping, waiting, and the particular melancholy of being brilliant in a small provincial capital.
The woman the evening belongs to
Schröter arrived in 1776, twenty-five years old and already a working singer and actress, at a court that had not yet decided whether performing was a profession or a pastime for its own members. In 1779 she created the title role of Goethe's Iphigenie, with Goethe himself playing Orest. This is the only production in the town's current repertoire that gives her the evening rather than a footnote in someone else's.
Performances
Also on stage here
Where
Lucas-Cranach-Haus, Markt 11/12, 99423 Weimar
Organiser
Theater im Gewölbe
Facts checked against the organiser on 29 August 2026
Places and people
Historical figures
1751–1802 • singer • actress • composer
The evening is hers — the singer and actress the house calls Weimar's first stage diva, looking back on her career here.
1749–1832 • writer • statesman • naturalist
The other half of the title, and the man whose theatre made and framed her Weimar career.
Historical periods
The court theatre of the classical decades, seen from the performer's side.
For roughly sixty years a duchy of a few thousand people held the centre of German literature, because its ruler kept inviting writers to live there and then gave them jobs. That is the whole mechanism, and it ran from Goethe's arrival in 1775 to his death in 1832.