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Sarah Bernhardt
Sarah Bernhardt , 1844-1923, stage name of Rosine Bernard, French actress, b. Paris. At age 13 she entered the Paris Conservatory, and later attracted attention during appearances at the Odéon (1866-72). With the Comédie Française (1872-80) she attained full stature with her sup...
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Edmond Rostand
Edmond Rostand , 1868-1918, French poet and dramatist. In 1890 appeared his first volume of verse, Les Musardises. His first plays were light, fanciful, and charmingly poetic, though of slight substance— Les Romanesques (1894, tr., The Romancers, 1899); La Princesse lointaine (1895, tr....
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Alphonse Mucha
Alphonse Mucha , 1860-1939, Czech artist. Mucha's art nouveau style, characterized by twisting, swirling flower and hair motifs, set the style for poster art for a generation. He created celebrated posters for Sarah Bernhardt and designed sets and costumes for her plays. In his later works, primar...
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Giuseppe Giacosa
Giuseppe Giacosa , 1847-1906, Italian dramatic poet. After Una partita a scacchi [a game of chess] (1873) won him his first success, he devoted himself to playwriting. His plays, which deal largely with life in Piedmont and reflect the bourgeois attitudes of his day, are notable for their simplici...
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Hermann Sudermann
Hermann Sudermann , 1857-1928, German dramatist and novelist. His play Die Ehre (1889; tr. Honor, 1906) was one of the first successes of the burgeoning German naturalist movement. Sudermann's works became immensely popular, particularly the psychological novel Frau Sorge (1887; tr. Dame Care...
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Eleonora Duse
Eleonora Duse , 1859-1924, Italian actress. From a theatrical family, she made a successful appearance at 14 as Juliet and in 1879 gained recognition in Emilé Zola's Thérèse Raquin. In 1893, in New York and London, her portrayal of Dumas's La Dame aux camélias was ext...
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Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou , 1831-1908, French dramatist. Author of some 70 plays, he won great popularity with his light comedies and pretentious historical pieces, but his reputation later declined. His best farce comedy is Divorçons! (1880, tr. 1881). Among his semihistorical melodramas are Patri...
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Benoît Constant Coquelin
Benoît Constant Coquelin , 1841-1909, French actor, known as Coquelin aîné [the elder]. He made his debut at the Comédie française in 1860 and achieved fame in classic comic roles, such as the valets in Molière's plays and Beaumarchais's Figaro. He made an...
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Otis Skinner
Otis Skinner 1858-1942, American actor, b. Cambridge, Mass. Skinner made his New York debut in 1879. After years as supporting player to Booth and Barrett, he toured with Augustin Daly and later with Modjeska . Enjoying a long and varied career, he won lasting fame in Kismet (1911). Skinner wr...
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acting
acting the representation of a usually fictional character on stage or in films. At its highest levels of accomplishment acting involves the employment of technique and/or an imaginative identification with the character on the part of the actor. In this way the full emotional weight of situations ...
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