Marianne Ehrenström

1773 - 1867

Sweden

Marianne Ehrenström grew up in Zweibrücken and Stralsund, where her father was a commandant. She studied music with Abbé Vogler and Clementi and recitation with the actor J. M. Monvel. From 1792 to her marriage in 1803, she was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Sophia Magdalena and a famous soprano singer in the cultural circles of Stockholm, celebrated by the Gustavian poets. She was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts.

Marianne Ehrenström, who wrote several articles on Swedish cultural life for foreign newspapers, has left us a valuable record of cultural life during the reign of Gustav III in Notices sur la littérature et les beaux arts en Suède, 1826. Some of her remembrances have been published in A. Ahnfelt’s Ur svenska hofvets och aristokratiens lif, 1980.