Born: 3 October 1858, Italy
Died: 21 April 1924
Country most active: International
Also known as: NA
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Eleonora Duse, an Italian actress, born at Vigevano. Her childhood and early youth were filled with sorrow, arising from poverty, hardships, and an unworthily bestowed affection. She came from a family of actors, her grandfather having founded the Garibaldi Theatre in Pudua.
As a little girl she was dragged about the minor theatres of Italy in her father’s companies, playing Cosette in Les Miserables at seven. Franceska da Rimini at thirteen, and when she was fourteen she played Juliet to Verona, with brilliant success. But shew as compelled to struggle for some years in itinerant companies, and her privations seriously impaired her health.
Before she was twenty she was married to an Italian actor-journalist, Signor Chechi, but they soon separated. By 1885 she was recognized as the greatest actress of Italy and one of the greatest of her time, and her subsequent career was one of the extraordinary success. After meeting with enthusiastic approval in European capitals, she made her American début in January, 1893, as Camille, at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, where she created a profound impression by the originality, simplicity and sincerity of her acting.
For several years she was closely associated with the poet, Gabriele D’Annunzio, and much of his success as a dramatist was undoubtedly due to her interpretation of his work.
In 1902 she reappeared in America, and later acted at intervals in Italy and in brief European tours, but her health was such that she was compelled for the most part to live in retirement.
In 1923 she again visited the United States and was everywhere received with the honors due to the strain, and she died at Pittsburgh, PA, in April, 1924.
The art of Eleonora Duse was distinguished above all for its naturalness, its subtle intensity of expression, and its strange pantomimic power. In contrast to Sara Bernhardt, who alone among modern actresses could be compared with her, she avoided all accessories of make-up, depending on intense naturalness rather than stage effect, on sympathetic force and poignant intellectuality rather than the theatrical emotionalism of the French tradition. She will be remembered as one of the great actresses of this generation, and as a powerful influence by the modern style of acting.
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
This great actress, who made so many European and American hearts beat faster over the tragedy of life, was issued from a poor family of Venetian comedians, who traveled miserably from town to town in North Italy. The sorrows and strifes of this first part of her life, together with the extreme sensibility of her character, are certainly the main elements of her success. She went on the stage for the first time to play the part of a small girl in an adaptation of the Miserables of Hugo. She was revealed to herself in Romeo and Juliet, at Verona, and to the Italian public in Rome, at the age of twenty years, when she saved from failure a play of Dumas by substituting for the prima donna of her company, Giacinta Pezzano. The Roman public brought her in triumph through the streets. After this revelation, she conquered all the main theatrical centers of Italy, and then traveled amidst continual applause and emotion through South America, Russia, Vienna, Berlin, and North America, where the sympathy of the feminine population touched her ever restless soul. Finally, she played in Paris, till then the undisputed domain of her great rival, Sarah Bernhardt. Less elegant and showy, she won the day by the striking and tragic reality of her interpretations and the passionate variety of her attitudes. Sarah Bernhardt never forgave her this victory. She interpreted many authors, as Dumas (in The Dame au Camelias), Sardou, Ibsen (The Woman of the Sea), Sudermann, and D’Annunzio, the poet, who loved her, and to whom she remained devoted even after he cruelly left her. She was a great friend of Matilde Serao and Arrigo Boito. Her theatrical managers were her father, Cesare Rossi, Pezzano, Tdnczer, Schurmann, and herself. In her last years, she fell very ill, but after short rests, she persisted in acting, against the advice of her doctors, and died in Pittsburgh, U. S. A., of pneumonia. The American nation is not likely to forget the privilege of having been a spectator of her last and sublime interpretations. She will be remembered as one of the great actresses of this generation, and as a powerful influence on the modern style of acting as she depended on intense naturalness rather than stage effect, on sympathetic force and poignant intellectuality rather than the theatrical emotionahsm of the French tradition.
IW note: Duse was romantically involved with Italian feminist Lina Poletti; the two lived together in Florence for two years following Duse’s retirement in 1909.