roich/yetta

Lives in the Yiddish Theatre
SHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF THOSE INVOLVED IN THE Yiddish THEATRE
aS DESCRIBED IN zALMEN zYLBERCWEIG'S "lEKSIKON FUN YIDISHN TEATER"
1931-1969

Yetta Roich

Born in June 1862 in Lemberg, Galicia, to well-to-do parents.

After her mother's death, her father married a second wife, who treated her badly, and she had to think of a purpose for herself.

Owning a lovely voice, she came up as a chorus member in the local Polish theatre. When Professor Hurwitz heard her sing, he engaged her in short order for his Yiddish troupe in Vienna.

The troupe began, however in the meantime without her acting in Bukovina, but because Anita Gradner left the troupe, R. soon became the leading lady (prima donna).

After her marriage to Kalmen Juvelier, the troupe nevertheless went around, across Galicia, though Juvelier in the meantime was left by himself and worked as a theatre director.

R. played for nineteen years under her husband's direction throughout Galicia, Bukovina, Romania, Turkey, Egypt, until 1900 when Professor Hurwitz came to Czernowitz, where his troupe was playing then, and took over the entire troupe to America.

Here R. played lovely theatre roles. In 1908 she passed away in New York and came to her eternal rest at the burial plot of the Stryjer Society at Washington Cemetery [in Brooklyn, New York --ed.]

Her daughter Mina (Juvelier), who had studied in a Vienna conservatory and who had afterwards sang in the Chicago Opera, passed away in New York in 1917. Her other daughter, Gin Juvelier, for a time had acted on the Yiddish stage.

Her husband, Kalmen Juvelier reports that R. became a prudent and sound performer, was beloved by her public and other actors. She was one of the first who had in hard times carried on in the Yiddish theatre and spread the art of the Yiddish theatre across Europe, Asia Minor and America.

M. E. from Kalmen Juvelier.

Zalmen Zylbercweig--"Album of the Yiddish Theatre", New York, 1934, p. 22.

Adapted from the original Yiddish text found within the "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre" by Zalmen Zylbercweig, Volume 4, page 2561.