Eleonora Duse summary

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Eleonora Duse, (born Oct. 3, 1858, near or in Vigevano, Lombardy, Austrian Empire—died April 21, 1924, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.), Italian actress. Born into a family of touring actors, she appeared on stage from age four. She acted in several French plays to great acclaim from 1878 and toured with her own company in Europe and the U.S. after 1885. She fell in love with the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio in the 1890s and acted in several plays he wrote for her. Unlike her contemporary Sarah Bernhardt, she did not try to project her own personality but instead sought to lose herself in her characters. The most fluent and expressive actress of her day, she was especially noted for her roles in Henrik Ibsen’s plays. She retired in 1909 but returned to the stage in 1921 and was touring the U.S. when she died.

Gabriele D’Annunzio Summary

Gabriele D’Annunzio was an Italian poet, novelist, dramatist, short-story writer, journalist, military hero, and protofascist political leader. He was the leading writer of Italy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The son of a politically prominent and wealthy Pescara landowner, D’Annunzio

Henrik Ibsen Summary

Henrik Ibsen was a major Norwegian playwright of the late 19th century who introduced to the European stage a new order of moral analysis that was placed against a severely realistic middle-class background and developed with economy of action, penetrating dialogue, and rigorous thought. Ibsen was

acting Summary

Acting, the performing art in which movement, gesture, and intonation are used to realize a fictional character for the stage, for motion pictures, or for television. (Read Lee Strasberg’s 1959 Britannica essay on acting.) Acting is generally agreed to be a matter less of mimicry, exhibitionism, or