Mette Marie Astrup

Mette Marie Astrup

Mette Marie Astrup (25 April 1760 - 16 February 1834) was a Danish actress, one of the best known of her time in Denmark, and she enjoyed a career totalling fifty years at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen.

Life and career

Astrup was born the child of Sven Andersen Astrup, a former servant who was employed as porter at the Royal Danish Theatre upon its foundation in 1748. She began her performing career in 1772, and by 1773 was employed at the Theatre itself, which was always short of female actors in the 18th century.

She became a student of the theatre's primadonna Lisbeth Cathrine Amalie Rose, and was widely regarded as her successor; she played romantic parts, dramatic tragedy and, in her later years, gentle mothers. From 1777 until its dissolution in 1779 she was a member of Det dramatiske Sellskap, a students' club for young actors, which ceased after a short but very active period of cultural development, and whilst there was a student of Fredrik Schwarz. She was described as dignified and with a great feeling for her costume, which was designed by the actors themselves. When the "new style" of acting was introduced onto the stage in 1808, her way of acting then became unfashionble.

She played Leonore in Den Stundenlöse (1773), Else Skolemesters in Barselstuen (1778), and Lady Macbeth in the Scottish play Macbeth in 1817.

Astrup never married, but she did have a long-term relationship with Adam Hauch, who was director of the Royal Danish Theatre from 1794 to 1798, and again from 1801 to 1811 (she had a son, believed to have been fathered by him). She lived all her life in the porter's residence at the theatre; this position was inherited within her family, and was subsequently managed by her mother Dorthe, and then by her older sister Sophie, after her father's death in 1792. Her other sister, Anne Marie, also worked at the Theatre, as a dresser in the wardrobe department. Mette Marit Astrup gave her last performance in 1823, retiring after fifty years on the stage.

References

• Biographical detail at DKInfo website (Danish)