Biography to Eleonora Duse - Research Paper Example

?Biography “Eleonora was a child of the stage and spent the greater part of her life on the boards” says Danish critic and scholar Georg Brandes, of this great actress. (Brandes, The Living Age,168) Eleonora Duse was born into a family of travelling actors on 3rd. October 1858, in Vigevano, Lombardy, which was part of the Austrian empire, now in Italy. She lived in poverty during the early years of her life, and this phase was to her, a great teacher. Duse had no formal education and her learning came from her mother Angelica, with whom she shared a deep and close bond; and the other actors who were part of the family troupe. She performed her first role, that of Cosette, in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables at the tender age of four, when the Duse family troupe performed the play. She formally became an official member of the troupe in 1863 at the age of five. By the time Duse was a teenager, the Duse troupe had combined with Rosaspina, and Eleonora, who brought passion into her roles, was recognized as an important member of the troupe. However, her first break came when she played the role of the young love sick Juliet, in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in Verona, at the age of fourteen. At this stage of her life, when it seemed that stardom was hers, she found herself completely alone. Her mother died while she was performing on stage, and after her mother’s death, her father left her to pursue his own career in art. This pattern of great achievement in her career on the one hand, and unhappiness and despair in her personal life on the other, was to mark her life to the end of her days. After her mother’s death she found herself alone, and met with little success as she moved from one company to another, between 1874 and 1878. During this period she never got any leading roles, but contented herself with supporting roles, convinced that her talent would be recognized. Something of a rebel, she suffered many hardships, till she got a leading role in the company of Ciotti-Belli-Blanes, as a replacement for the leading lady who fell ill. She played this role in many performances and distinguished herself. The exposure she got as part of this theatre company allowed her to make great strides in her acting career. In the year 1878 which marked the turning point in her career, she was showered with accolades for her portrayal of Marcella in Victorien Sardou’s Borghesi di Pontarcy. During her performances for Ciotti-Belli-Blanes, she was noticed by the prominent actor-manager, Giovanni Emmanuel, and was invited to join his company Fiorentini. This period with Fiorentini, brief though it was, served to give Duse the chance to portray various types of characters and greatly increased her repertoire of roles. At this time she fell in love with Martino Cafiero, a man twenty years her senior, and had a love child that died in infancy. The company however disintegrated, and Duse signed a new contract with Cesare Rossi. This break with Fiorentini, also put an end to her relationship with Cafiero, who refused to accept their baby boy. It was her performance of the title role in Emile Zola’s Therese Raquin, which won her great acclaim from audiences and critics alike. She has been acclaimed by those who saw her perform, as the greatest actress of her time and perhaps of all time. Popularly known simply as Duse (pronounced Doo’za) the actress, who is said to have never used makeup, turned her back on traditional acting techniques, to begin her own naturalistic style of acting. "I make up my soul, not my face," she is said to have commented when asked about her shunning of makeup. (quoted from Trivia Library) Her admirers included names like Charlie Chaplin, Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw, who admired realism in acting. The nineteenth century was a time when people flocked to watch stage performances, and Duse was one of the most admired and popular stars of her time. She won international acclaim, despite the fact that she performed only in Italian. She seems to be the epitome of the saying “art transcends the barriers of language.” Critics amazed by her emoting skills, are reported to have seen her blush on stage in embarrassment, or visibly pale in fear, and her eyes betray the thoughts that flashed through the mind of the character she portrayed. It seemed as if she got under the skin of the character she was portraying, actually becoming the character the dramatist had visualized. Her acting seemed to possess a magical quality, and her use of ordinary objects like shawls or flowers or chains to portray her emotions was extraordinary. In 1882, after watching a performance by French actress Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse realized that Italian audiences were bored by the traditional Italian plays, and decided to act in plays by contemporary French dramatists. For the next three years, she acted in the Italian versions of a number of plays by the younger Alexandre Dumas. She scored a phenomenal triumph in the first of these as she portrayed Lionette in La Princesse de Bagdad. This was followed by her portrayal of Cesarine in La Femme de Claude. In 1884 she played the title role of Denise in Dumas’ play of the same name and of Santuzza in Giovanni Verga’s Cavalleria rusticana. During this period, she along with Sarah Bernhardt dominated the international stage. Although they played the same roles, albeit in different languages, their styles were completely different. Sarah Bernhardt was highly emotional and depended on costume and makeup to portray the character that she played, whereas Duse relied more on intellectual thought and realism rather than theatrics in her portrayal. “The art of Eleonora Duse was the kind that gave the beholder insight into a great soul, into a world of beauty to which she alone held the key”. (Brandes,The Living Age, 165) In the year 1885, after an extensive tour out of Europe to places such as South America with Cesare Rossi, she returned to Italy and was involved in a bitter split from her husband Tebaldo Checchi, whom she had married in 1881, and who had given her a daughter. A couple of years later, she decided to form her own theatre company. Her Drama Company of the City of Rome, ( Compagnia della Citta di Roma) was formed with well known actor Flavio Ando. During the next few years, as her company grew, so also her fame grew throughout Europe. This was a period when she was romantically involved with many of her leading men, including Flavio Ando. It was also a period of stability in her life, and she was able to give her daughter Enrichetta a home in Venice. By 1893 she again began touring major cities of the world like London and New York. The year 1894 marked another turning point in the life of Eleonora Duse. At this time she fell in love with the young Gabriele D’Annunzio, whose career she financed and who wrote a number of plays for her. She played important parts in many of his plays like La Citta morta in 1898 and Francesca da Rimini in 1901. The story of their love was poignantly related in his novel Il fuoco in 1900. It caused a public scandal at the time, because the author laid bare the intimate secrets of their love life in the novel. Brandes however remarks that the redeeming feature of the novel is that “perhaps no one else has ever glorified the artist in Duse as he did when he placed his former sweetheart before the eyes of the world”. (Brandes,The Living Age,166) Henrik Ibsen was another source of inspiration for the talents of this extraordinary actress. She played Nora in A Doll’s House, Rebecca West in Rosmersholm, Ella Rentheim in John Gabriel Borkman, and, Ellida in The Lady from the Sea. When Ibsen saw her performance in Hedda Gabler, he was deeply moved by her performance. It was as if she had brought to the role a touch of fantasy that went beyond the realm of realism. George Bernard Shaw, the British playwright, was one of those who was fascinated by Eleonora Duse’s ability to produce an illusion “of being infinite in variety of beautiful pose and motion.” (quoted from Encyclopedia Britannica) Duse had the ability to change her gait or gestures for the various roles she played. Her range and choice of gestures matched her characters exactly and Shaw confessed that “in an apparent million of changes and inflexions”, he had yet to see her at an “awkward angle”. (quoted from Encyclopedia Britannica) One of her critics observed that Duse managed to play what was written between the written lines, and “to watch her was to read a psychological novel.” (quoted from Encyclopedia Britannica) Her great acting talent however was dogged by ill health. The hardships of constant travelling in the touring companies during her childhood, had taken their toll, and she was never in very good health. In the year 1909, at the age of forty six, she stopped acting due to health reasons. During this time, she focused on her health, tried to recuperate, and generally did all the things that she had denied herself during the first hectic years of her life; that she had given to the stage to achieve her extraordinary success. Having incurred financial losses during the years of the First World War, she returned to the stage in 1921. During the next two years, she toured extensively in Europe, although her health was a constant source of worry. In 1923 she began her last tour to the United States where she performed across America, in New York, Boston, Washington, New Orleans and Baltimore. Her last performance was in Pittsburgh in April where she collapsed. She died on April 21 1924. The Pittsburgh Press of 21 April 1924 reporting her death said of her, “Eleonora Duse, famous Italian tragedienne has written a last chapter to the story of a life of triumph and sorrow”.(The Pittsburgh Press) Her body was taken back to Italy and she was buried according to her wishes in a small cemetery at Asolo. Some of the best known roles Duse played were Marguerite in the Italian version of La Dame aux Camelias and Ibsen’s Nora in A doll’s House. However, her own favorite seemed to be the role of Ellida in Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea. Unfortunately, almost no footage has survived and the talents of this great actress can only be gauged from what has been written about her performances. She seemed to be the epitome of sincerity, a natural actress, whose acting was the result of an inner vision of the character she portrayed. A slender enigmatic personality who disdained publicity, “Duse never played up to the public; she scorned all artificial means toward getting her effect. Her genius had use for no other aids than inspiration”. (Brandes, The Living Age, 165) She was the first woman to grace the cover of Time magazine in 1923 and the magazine paid handsome tribute to her talent in these words, “Eleanora Duse, Italian actress, is generally conceded a solitary niche of honor at the forefront of the players of the world. So amazing is her art that she will stand in shadowy greatness with Mrs. Siddons, David Garrick, Salvini, Ellen Terry, Sarah Bernhardt.” (Time, The theatre, Duse) Works Cited Brandes Georg “Eleanora Duse” The Living Age October 15 1926 pp 165-169 web 26 November 2012 http://www.unz.org/Pub/LivingAge-1926oct15-00165 Encyclopedia Britannica “Eleonora Duse". Encyclop?dia Britannica. Encyclop?dia Britannica Online. Encyclop?dia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 23 Nov. 2012 . The Pittsburgh Press April 21 1924 “Eleonora Duse Noted Actress Is Dead Here” web 26 November 2012 http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=djft3U1LymYC&dat=19240421&printsec=frontpage&hl=en Time Magazine “The Theatre: Duse” Monday, July 30, 1923 web 26 November 2012 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,727260,00.html#ixzz2DG2QXS9g Trivia-Library.Com “Biography of Italian Actress Eleonora Duse Part 1” web 26 November 2012 http://www.trivia-library.com/b/biography-of-italian-actress-eleonora-duse-part-1.htm Read More