Playing to the Gods

by Peter Rader

  In her twenties, she had famously walked away from the prestigious Comédie-Française to form her own company, a bold but brilliant move that had inspired Eleonora Duse to do likewise. But success had come much more slowly for Duse.

  Odd as it may seem today, it was considered frivolous at the time, even harmful, for an actress to “feel” the part she was playing. As critic and philosopher Denis Diderot had written in The Paradox of Acting (published in 1830): “Extreme sensitiveness makes poor actors; while absolute lack of sensitiveness is a quality of the highest acting.” His bizarre argument went as follows:

  If the actor were full, really full, of feeling, how could he play the same part twice running with the same spirit and success? Full of fire at the first performance, he would be worn out and cold as a marble at the third.

  For Diderot, acting was more akin to an athletic performance than an art—it required physical discipline. The ideal actor should feel nothing and be a master of physical mimicry. This antiemotional acting by imitation, or “indication,” was known as Symbolism or the Symbolic style. It’s what audiences had come to expect. If actors attempted to act more naturally, they were often booed from the stage. Michel Baron, the favorite pupil of French playwright Molière, attempted “to speak and not declaim,” and he was hissed at by the seventeenth-century Parisian public.

  The “struggle” between emotionalism and antiemotionalism—represented perfectly in the rivalry between Duse and Bernhardt—went back to Roman times and the very origins of the theater. William Archer, in his famous 1888 essay, Masks or Faces?, cited a first-century Roman rhetorician:

  Quintilian . . . is very explicit on the subject of stage tears. . . . “The great secret . . . for moving the passions is to be moved ourselves; for the imitation of grief, anger, indignation, will often be ridiculous, if our words and countenance alone conform to the emotion, not our heart.”

  To mimic the feeling from the outside in, as Sarah would do, was useless trickery, a disservice to the audience. Quintilian’s counsel to actors: “Let our speech proceed from the very state of mind which we wish to induce in the judge.”

  But Quintilian was in the minority. Summoning an emotion on command was devilishly difficult, especially in colossal amphitheaters that seated tens of thousands. It was far easier to employ a language of gestures and masks, systematized by actors and accepted by the public as shorthand symbols. These millennia-old conventions—the tricks of the trade—were now woven into the very fabric of the theater. The idealized poses had become the hallmarks of great acting.

  When the unschooled Eleonora began her career in the 1860s, she had certainly not been exposed to the writings of Diderot or Quintilian. Without any formal training, she simply began acting from the inside out—allowing her feelings to guide her on the stage. Those who recognized Duse’s genius were floored by it. Russian actor-director Konstantin Stanislavski would one day codify Duse’s craft into what would become the basis of method acting in America. But the Duse method, known as verismo (“realism”), was an abomination to Sarah Bernhardt and many others, who felt it made theater pedestrian. A tragic drama like La Dame aux camélias needed to be performed with grandeur. Sarah felt that Eleonora’s work was returning the art to the ignominy from which she had lifted it.

  By the following year, in the summer of 1895, the Duse-Bernhardt rivalry would reach its apogee in an extraordinary theatrical event: both actresses were booked to perform across the street from each other in London—in the very same play.

  After years of competition, onstage and in their private lives, the two stars would finally be performing head-to-head in the decisive showcase of their radically different styles. Both actresses had their ardent proponents, and it was by no means clear which would prevail.

  Ultimately they would each have an extraordinary impact: one would leave an enduring mark on the theater, the other would live in our imaginations forever. The path to this legacy, however, would be marked by high drama and low blows.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The legend is that Duse’s birth took place on a moving train in the year 1858, as the locomotive steamed into Vigevano in northern Italy. Though this story, retold by several early biographers, is factually incorrect,I it is true in spirit, given Eleonora’s restless nature and lifelong resistance to putting down roots.

  Duse was born into a family of troubadours who moved from town to town, performing for pennies in the public square. It was a turbulent time in Italy—not yet a country, unsure of its future. The peninsula remained an amalgamation of fiefdoms, city-states with conflicting outlooks and cultures: the Austrian-controlled Republic of Venice, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the Papal States of Rome, and the Kingdom of Sardinia, ruled by the progressive King Vittorio Emanuele II.

  For centuries, Italian writers and scholars had urged unification. In the fourteenth century, humanist Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) had rediscovered Cicero’s letters—epistles filled with celebrations of classical civilization. Realizing with great sadness that Italy’s warring tribes had lost touch with the beauty and propriety of a bygone era, Petrarch initiated the idea of a historical “Dark Ages.” His eloquent canzone Italia Mia cried out for peace across the Italian peninsula.

  By the nineteenth century Petrarch’s plea had become a rallying cry for Italian statehood. In 1859, one year after Eleonora’s birth, unification forces would seize Lombardy from the Austrians and declare Vittorio Emanuele king of Italy, though it took another decade or two before the kingdom spanned the entire peninsula. This ongoing Italian revolution affected the Duse family personally when accusations of treason ended the career of Eleonora’s grandfather, the highly gifted Luigi Duse, one of the most celebrated actors of his day.

  Luigi had entered the profession against the wishes of his family, prosperous merchants who shipped goods up and down the Adriatic. In an era when sons were expected to enter the family trade, particularly when that trade was thriving and offered opportunities for upward mobility, it was unthinkable for the boy to pursue a “hobby” such as acting. But that is precisely what willful Luigi did.

  He had been born in 1792, the year French revolutionaries imprisoned Marie Antoinette and composed “La Marseillaise.” With recent advances in textiles and manufacturing, the Industrial Revolution had given birth to a newly prosperous merchant class in which the Duse family, importers of goods from foreign lands, was ensconced. They plied their trade in Chioggia, perched on the southern lip of the Venetian lagoon. Though not nearly as glamorous as its sister city to the north, Chioggia offered ample Venetian charm in its waterways, stone bridges, and secluded alleyways. Young Luigi, with his good looks and romantic ideas, would gaze for hours at the blue waters of the Adriatic, dreaming of touring the world.

  In a vain attempt to rid him of his artistic delusions, Luigi was dispatched inland by his father to apprentice with his uncle, who worked as a clerk in the city of Padua. But the young Luigi quickly abandoned his post to join a company of touring actors. Both talented and ambitious, he soon launched his own company, founding the Teatro Duse in Padua in 1834. Though he shone at first in tragic roles, Luigi discovered that his true passion lay in comedic characterizations, which were extremely popular in the Veneto region.

  At the time, Italian comedy took its inspiration from commedia dell’arte, which had originated in the sixteenth century. Playing on makeshift stages to largely illiterate and unsophisticated crowds, actors specialized in a specific maschera (a masked “type”) or stock character whose antics were easy to follow. These archetypes included Pantalone (literally, “Trousers”), the patron or master—miserly and invariably cuckold, the butt of many jokes—and his servant, Arlecchino (Harlequin), perhaps the most famous, with his catlike mask, costume of multicolored triangles, and the stick with which he slapped the other actors around (the origin of the word slapstick). Other archetypes in the commedia pantheon were Il Capitano (The Captain)—bold, swaggering, but ultimately a trembling coward—and I
l Dottore (The Doctor), a caricature of the learned professional, both a fraud and a pompous ass. The common theme, of course, was antiauthoritarianism, which is what made these comedies so popular with the masses as they cheered on the heroes: Gli Innamorati (the star-crossed Lovers), who must battle against society to fulfill their destiny. But these standardized vignettes were stifling for a talented thespian like Luigi Duse. The plots were contrived and hackneyed; all the actors wore masks, concealing their facial expressions and forcing them to perform with exaggerated gestures. Luigi felt it was time to take off the masks. But instead of overturning the commedia dell’arte tradition, Luigi rebelled within the system, by creating a new archetype—his own signature maschera, one without a mask, however.

  With a long black ponytail, chevron hat, turquoise jacket, and floral waistcoat, Luigi turned himself into Giacometto, a bumbling fellow, always short of money, but jolly nonetheless. Giacometto became a staple of the Veneto region and established Luigi as a major Italian actor. French novelist George Sand ranked his talent above that of the finest French comics. A populist beloved by all, “Gigi” allowed students to attend his performances by bartering salami, flowers, or even a bag of onions for admission. Theatergoers began calling him Amico (our friend) Duse; they trusted him implicitly. But even quicker than his ascent was his fall.

  Gigi had become known for improvising asides, comical indictments of the establishment whispered conspiratorially to the delighted crowd. He once mocked Italian patriot and Populist Daniele Manin, who had been agitating to seize control of Venice from the Austrians—an extremely popular cause. Nothing was off-limits for the playful Gigi, especially when he walked the boards as Giacometto. This time he went too far, however. Luigi had rivals in the Veneto theater—other actors, jealous of his popularity and fame, who exploited the Manin incident to spread rumors that Duse was unpatriotic. It worked.

  The rejection was sudden and absolute; Luigi’s once-adoring audience abandoned him. In a few years, his namesake theater in Padua, the Teatro Duse, would be renamed Teatro Garibaldi, after the revolutionary leader of the “red shirts,” the militia largely responsible for the unification of Italy. Luigi died, bitter and impoverished, in 1854, leaving four sons, all actors.

  Like his father before him, Luigi had insisted that his children enter the new family business—though they would likely have done far better in other fields, for they shared neither Luigi’s talent nor his enthusiasm for the stage. Eleonora’s father, third-born Alessandro, had wanted to be a painter—but he, like his brothers, lacked the will to defy his father.

  In one performance early in his undistinguished career, Alessandro bungled the final lines of a play and the curtain closed to tepid applause. His father witnessed the gaffe from the balcony and—moody and bitter after his forced retirement—shouted out: “Asino!” (Jackass!) The crowd turned to the box in which Luigi was seated and recognized the aging actor, whom they had once loved. Unable to resist their applause, the elder statesman made his way to the stage for a bow, overshadowing the curtain call of his own son, who stood in silent humiliation. Though Luigi was too old for a comeback, it certainly felt like a vindication.

  The Compagnia Duse became a third-rate troupe—four brothers, their wives, and a handful of others related by blood or marriage. There were no fixed engagements, no security—it was busking, really, passing around a tin cup. They would pile their threadbare sets and rickety stage onto a donkey cart and walk from sunrise to sunset to reach the next town. Their inventory was rudimentary: a wall flat with a doorway, a multipurpose wooden bench. It did the job.

  One day Eleonora’s father found himself navigating a narrow alleyway in the medieval town of Vicenza, some thirty miles west of Venice, when a clump of dirt and leaves fell upon him. He glanced up to a second-story window to see an enchanting girl tending to a flower box where she was growing geraniums. A smitten Alessandro made certain to stroll down the same alley each day during the run in Vicenza. After a few more encounters with this dark-haired beauty, he mustered the courage to face the patriarch of the Cappelletto household, which was when it burst out of him: a spontaneous proposal of marriage. The courtship had consisted of a few furtive glances and shared smiles, but Alessandro had convinced himself the girl was heaven-sent. When he learned her name, it felt like a vindication: Angelica.

  Angelica’s father gave the nuptials his blessings. Angelica was the last in a sprawling family of twenty-one girls. Desperate for some peace and quiet, Signor Cappelletto dispatched his final offspring to join the Duse troubadours, where she became, by necessity rather than avocation, prima donna. She was beautiful, the brothers decided—talent came second.

  Angelica was pregnant almost overnight, but lost this first child, a boy, in childbirth. She soon became pregnant again; the company did not slow down. They were traveling from Venice to Vigevano when Angelica came to term in late 1858.

  Desperate not to lose another baby, Alessandro did what he could to provide a suitable venue for the child’s delivery. Scrounging together the coins in the kitty, he found an innkeeper willing to believe his lie that Angelica was “a woman of means”—it was the only way to secure the room. Alessandro repeated his fabrication on Eleonora’s birth certificate, attempting perhaps to elevate his daughter’s status. The child came into the world at 2:00 a.m. on October 3, 1858, and was baptized two days later. Her uncle Enrico was the godfather, and they listed Vigevano as their place of residence—“home,” to a traveling actor, was an elusive matter. Born in a hotel room, Eleonora would tour her entire life and end up dying in one, too.

  The Duses hardly had time to celebrate their baby’s birth before they were, again, on the road. Eleonora was soon trudging along with the rest of them, holding the hem of her mother’s dress. No home, no future, just the night’s performance, and the hope that it might yield enough to buy some food.

  • • •

  Eleonora was thrust upon the stage at age four. “She did not choose to be an actress,” said Eva Le Gallienne, a fellow actor who knew her: “She was forced to be one.”

  Eleonora’s first play, fittingly, was Les Misérables—an Italian adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel of societal injustice, in whose preface he wrote:

  So long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved . . . books like this cannot be useless.

  Eleonora certainly knew poverty, hunger, and spiritual darkness—it would seem more than appropriate to debut as Cosette, a penniless abandoned waif. So poor was the Duse troupe that they sent Eleonora out on the streets as a beggar; and that act of begging became a powerful acting coach—a girl who can read faces and summon tears at will is bound to get an extra lira or two.

  Though she had no training as an actress, Eleonora exhibited a preternatural ability to imagine scenarios in her mind. Lacking any real friends—her cousins were older—she would talk to furniture.

  Inanimate objects “in their silence, contained great enchantment,” Eleonora once wrote.

  Her mother recognized early on that Eleonora had the artist’s gift of great sensitivity; she helped nurture her talents, allowing Eleonora time to play imaginary games. While Eleonora and Angelica felt strongly connected, her father looked at the child in more practical terms. Certain plays in their repertoire called for children, the other kids in the troupe were older—why not make use of Eleonora?

  In Eleonora’s very first performance as Cosette, a stage manager in the wings whacked her on the legs with a switch before pushing her onto the stage—she needed to cry in the scene, and couldn’t possibly be expected to do so on her own. As biographer William Weaver noted: “She learned, early and without metaphor, that in order to entertain the public, the actor had to suffer.”

  And suffer she did. The company was constantly on the move, arriving in a new town when the streets were busy on a market day or after a fair. Travelin
g on foot sometimes for miles through the night, they took care to avoid the ongoing revolt against Austria. Theaters would be closed in battle areas and that meant going hungry.

  Duse grew up desperately lonely: no home, no community. After learning to read, she buried her head in books—the few that they could afford, mainly scripts of new plays. She would read them again and again, trying to fathom the playwright’s intention. Even at this young age, Duse had an instinct that there was more to acting than the rote recitation she observed in her company. But no one else saw it as she did, which only increased Eleonora’s feeling of isolation.

  One time in a village outside of Turin, Eleonora observed a group of girls around her age who were playing merry-go-round. “Disheveled, giggling and shouting, unrestrained in the wind,” is how she described them in an autobiography she began many years later but never finished. She was “dazzled by the hum, by that rotating fly wheel,” sighing, “Ah! To enter there!”

  Mustering her resolve, Eleonora joined the play, but the girls stopped suddenly and ogled the interloper; she ran back to her mother in tears.

  Another day in another town, Eleonora again spotted a girl her age—by herself, this time, sitting near a fountain. Eleonora could sense that she, too, was lonely and approached. For a moment they stood side by side in silence, then Eleonora reached out boldly and took her hand. The apparently homeless girl stayed with the actors for several days as they played the town.

  Duse told the story to an acquaintance some forty years later and still remembered the girl’s name: Déjanira. “She was my first friend—my only childhood friend,” Eleonora wrote. “I loved her.”

  Then she saw her first corpse; Eleonora was twelve, living in Tuscany. The river near their cottage overran its banks during a flood, and a little girl drowned. It was Eleonora, in fact, who discovered the dead body while crossing a bridge.