Eleonora Duse: A Biography

by Helen Sheehy

Book Overview

A new biography, the first in two decades, of the legendary actress who inspired Anton Chekhov, popularized Henrik Ibsen, and spurred Stanislavski to create a new theory of acting based on her art and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375400176
• ISBN13: 9780375400179
• Release Date: August 2003
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

An actress beyond compare

The difficulty of describing delicacy in acting is one that Helen Sheehy has not entirely overcome, but otherwise she seems to have read and swallowed everything written about the great Duse and here, in this big Knopf biography (a genre all its own) she arranges the facts in that big sumptuous Knopf manner, with creamy photographs and the touch of class big book buyers love. Basically a conservative book, this book leads us to believe that no one of today is fit to tie Duse's shoes.Sometimes Duse was foolish about men and about writing, and according to the standards of the day she was a bad mother, but other than that, she was sublime in every way. Sheehy claims that her appeal was a plastic one, that her rich warm smile illuminated her face, and took away the slightly doughy and overdone shadows her photos cast in composure. She loved to walk, to relieve stress, and she made one half-hour motion picture, back in the days before exhibitors' demands froze the motion picture into being more or less ninety minutes long. Sheehy says it's great, but by this time, the reader isn't sure whether or not to believe her, because everything is so superlative the tone is pitched too high.

A dove in flight

My interest in the art of Eleonora Duse grew urgently while I studied the theater of Gabriele D'Annunzio. Strangely Duse's legend had not done more than tantalyze me hitherto. Vague photographs in sepia written words in passing had so far only configured a distant actress that was oddly lackluster. My fascination had remained with the likes of Adrienne Lecouvreur and with Rachel long dead players at the Comedie Francaise. I had lusted for Andromaque and Athalie living feverish candlelit nights among Corneille Moliere and Racine. I had imagined attending one of Sarah's histrionic performances. It was while I read 'La Citta Morta' and 'Francesca da Rimini' that D'Annunzio made me glance closer at the great Duse, shy and transparent with her understated genius for acting. Unhurriedly this seemingly intangible donna assoluta was letting me know that Eleonora Duse was no theatrical bandwagon. She now haunted me a fascinating dove in flight. Her's she claims with a grin, is not the boom enchantment one orders with a Byzantine impetuosity the enraptured hand to the brow. Or the hot stage tear that streaks the bright rouged cheek. That in a scene all Duse is willing to offer is a sigh. Her signature is a beguiling penchant to vanish. This biographical account by Helen Sheehy is like her masterful biography of Eva LeGallienne, a triumph. Both biographies are the product of an inspired and consummate writer. Please look up her life story of LeGallienne if you want quality. Other sources are 'Duse' by William Weaver and 'The Mystic in the Theatre' by Eva LeGallienne herself a great actress and writer. Eleonora wants to say that her's and her's alone is the thespian refinement you invoke with a glance and the faintest of tragic smiles. Many believe Duse to be the parent of modern acting. Both Sheehy and LeGallienne narrate how Eleonora started in the theater from the smallest age, playing with her family of itinerant actors. Duse's was a ragged and browbeaten Commedia dell'Arte peddling town to town in late nineteenth century Italy. I believe poverty and this early perambulating scarred her. There were times when Eleonora watched local urchins tormenting her father, who was neither talented nor enterprising. Her first liaison was with Arrigo Boito who along with Verdi wrote for the opera. They had a daughter. Then soon appeared Gabriele D'Annunzio a genial master of words who enraptured Eleonora with his exquisite theater. Perhaps he loved La Duse he clearly benefitted from her for by the time their convoluted idyll paled she was the most discussed actress in Europe. The philandering playwright and the sublime actress were now both monstruously famous. Sheehy narrates brilliantly her support and torment for Gabriele, as well as her theatrical conquest of America. How lucky are we cinematography captures today in perpetuity the inspirations of our gifted actresses. Locked in a box for all to watch. How sad that time a beast has gobbled up the classical perfo

The Mother of Modern Acting

Lee Strasberg, Charlie Chaplin, George Bernard Shaw, and dozens if not hundreds of others who had the privilege of seeing Duse on stage describe it as if they saw a saint, someone supernatural in her ability to convey thought, feeling, emotion, subtext and that extra something that's finally indescribable. The name Duse has been synonymous with the highest possible attainment in acting, even though she is little known outside the theater. Helen Sheehy has written a detailed, even scholarly biography that stands head and shoulders over the other previous bio in English, by William Weaver. Sheehy succeeds, as far as one can, at analyzing and dissecting otherworldly Genius. But the excellence of Sheehy's book also makes it an unbearable tease. Duse was a stage actress. No traces of her greatness remain, save one thirty minute film that is maddeningly difficult to obtain; for some reason, showings of the film are as rare as UFO sightings. In my mind the film has attained the status of a relic. And I've yet to see it. Frustration aside, Sheehy does much to unveil the very private views of her subject on art and life. I certainly wouldn't recommend this bio to anyone with only a casual interest in acting or theater; however, for anyone with a substantial interest in dramatic art, this bio is simply a must.

Insightful, artful biography of the mother of modern acting

As the New York Times has called this an "exemplary biography", there seems little reason to add a review by the average reader. However, you do not need to be an expert in theatre history to find this book a great read.I had never heard of Duse before Sheehy's work, yet the author makes a convincing argument why the Italian actress is one of the founders of modern acting - a woman who presented a powerful, natural style of acting that George Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chapin, and John Barrymore found overwhelming to behold. Duse created a compelling counterpoint to the highly stylized form perfected by Sarah Bernhardt and she presented a standard of a new acting for all performers in the twentieth century to emulate. Today, we are unaware as we watch film or television, that we are watching Duse's heirs.Sheehy goes beyond her central thesis of Duse's acting career to describe a very flawed woman. Sheehy enumerates Duse's poor choices in lovers, her neglect of her daughter because of the girl's physical resemblance to Duse's discarded husband, her indulgence in self-pity and hypochondria, and her manipulative use of society friends for favors and loans. Sheehy does not shy away from her hero's defects, but neither does she wallow in them.This book is of obvious value to people of the theatre or with special interest in Italian culture. For the general reader, it is an artful biography of a compelling and important cultural figure.

An Interesting and Enlightening Biography

Sarah Bernhardt achieved international celebrity at a time when acting was primarily a pictorial art, and she clung to that style long after it had come to be regarded as old-fashioned, in the latter part of the 1800s. Even after the turn of the century, playing Phèdre in London, she employed a meticulously choreographed series of poses, sometimes remaining motionless for as long as thirty seconds before she glided into the next position. Edmond Rostand called her "the queen of posture," and Helen Sheehy --- apparently no great admirer of Bernhardt --- adds with a straight face that her specialty was death. Bernhardt's name nevertheless appears frequently in Sheehy's biography of Eleonora Duse. Sheehy's examination of how Duse differed from Bernhardt, who in most ways exemplified everything that was believed to be desirable in an actor, makes her contributions and innovations more easily appreciated, particularly for readers with little or no knowledge of the theater.Duse (doo-ZAY) had learned the fundamentals of acting as a member of her family's troupe, a struggling, itinerant theater company that depended on each day's small income to pay for the day's bread and a bed for the night. While still quite young she had exhibited a strong empathetic imagination, among other "magic gifts" spoken of by her mother. Her unusual empathy first manifested itself in her sensing life in inanimate objects such as chairs and other household items, which she would talk to for hours at a time, asking for no reply.When she was 14, with a decade of acting experience behind her, Duse found herself in Verona playing Juliet, a girl her own age, and she experienced an uncanny sensation of actually becoming the incarnation of Shakespeare's character. Later she would speak of the harmony she felt that day and of a state of grace through which she was united in communion with the audience. Sheehy associates this event with the Dionysian concept of acquiring power over others through surrender of the self. For the rest of her life, Sheehy says, guided by "a secret voice" that she said was "an echo of the pain of the world," Duse would seek and find this state of grace and self-abandonment.Duse harbored a profound mistrust of language and probed deeply beneath the lines of her characters to discover --- and to portray --- what she called the invisible side of life. While Bernhardt was always Bernhardt, Duse disappeared within her characters, and although she always spoke her lines in Italian, she communicated their thoughts and feelings in ways so surpassingly subtle and yet so clear that her audiences seemed always to understand --- without understanding why.Duse wore no jewelry and her costumes were always simple and austere, much alike in color and line from role to role. Nor did she wear makeup, which in her view amounted to a mask. As it was, responding naturally to incidents affecting the character she played, she startled audiences by suddenly becoming deathly pale