Eleonora Duse

Duse, Eleonora 

Born Oct. 3, 1858, in Vigevano; died Apr. 21, 1924, in Pittsburgh, USA. Italian actress.

Duse was born into a family of actors. Beginning at the age of four, she performed with touring companies. She played the parts of Desdemona and Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Othello and Hamlet and Therese Raquin in Zola’s play of the same name, among others. She became Italy’s most popular actress in the late 1880’s, performing also with great success in most West European countries as well as in the USA, Latin America, and Egypt. In 1891-92 and in 1908 she toured Russia. Her creative work drew on contemporary Italian and foreign drama. She was the first in Italy to perform roles in Ibsen’s plays (for example, Nora in A Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler in the play of the same name). The roles performed in the plays of G. D’Annunzio (Anna in La città morta, Francesca inFrancesca da Rimini, and others), M. Maeterlinck (the title role in Monna Vanna), A. Dumas fils (Marguerite Gautier in La Dame aux camélias, one of her best roles), and V. Sardou occupied an important place in her work. Duse proved particularly adept at portraying nervous, passionate women, dissatisfied with the present and terrified of the future. A special quality of humaneness and a charming femininity characterized her portrayals. Her art, developed in the mold of psychological realism, was imbued with the desire to express the important thoughts and true feelings of people. Duse left the stage in 1909 but returned to it in 1921.

REFERENCES

Kugel’, A. R. Teatral’nye portrety. Petrograd-Moscow, 1923.
Stanislavskii, K. S. “Moia zhizn’ v iskusstve.” Sobr. soch., vol. 1. Moscow, 1954.
Signorelli, O. Eleonora Duse. Milan, 1959.