Duse, Eleonora

Duse, Eleonora (1858–1924), great Italian actress, born into a theatrical family. She was on the stage at the age of 4, and at 14 appeared as Juliet. As an adult actress her first notable success came in Zola's Thérèse Raquin (1879). Equally successful was her performance as Santuzza in Verga's Cavalleria rusticana (1884), a challenging and rewarding role which reinforced her growing interest in modern drama. In 1885 she made her first foreign tour, in Latin America, and on her return to Italy founded her own company, the Città di Roma. During a tour of Russia in 1891 Chekhov saw her as Shakespeare's Cleopatra; it has been suggested that he had her in mind while writing the part of Madame Arkadina in The Seagull. She made the first of four visits to the United States in 1893 and first visited England in 1894, where she played Mirandolina in Goldoni's La locandiera in a command performance at Windsor before Queen Victoria. A year later she and Sarah Bernhardt were both in London playing in Sudermann's Heimat, which gave the London critics the opportunity of comparing their styles, Shaw vigorously championing Duse while Clement Scott much preferred Bernhardt. (Their rivalry was renewed in Paris in 1897.) From her late thirties Duse devoted much of her time and money to promoting the plays of D'Annunzio, who first came into prominence as a dramatist when in 1898 she appeared in his La Gioconda and La città morte. She retired in 1909 but financial difficulties forced her back to the stage, and she reappeared in Turin in 1921 as Ellida in Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea. Two years later she started on her last international tour, dying in Pittsburgh in 1924; her body was returned to Italy and buried at Asolo. A slender, graceful woman, with dark eyes and expressive, mobile features, melancholy in repose, she was noted for the beauty of her gestures. She had a statuesque way of playing, a slowness and subtlety; her moments of immobility revealed her greatness. Sustained application went into the preparation of her roles; above all, her technical expertise and electrifying presence enabled her to transcend the handicap of a somewhat frail physique. She was noted for her refusal to wear make-up on stage, having apparently the ability to blush or turn pale at will. She was much admired in such big emotional parts as Sardou's Fédora, Tosca, and Théodora, and Camille in the younger Dumas's La Dame aux camélias, and was outstanding in Ibsen—particularly as Hedda Gabler, and as Rebecca West in Rosmersholm in the production Gordon Craig designed for her in Florence in 1906.