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"He was a poet, too, and he wrote the Story of Rimini about Paolo and Francesca, you know." "Oh, there you're away off, grandfather! Mr. Philips wrote about them; and that horrid D'Annunzio. Why, Duse gave D'Annunzio's play last winter! What are you thinking of?" "Perhaps I am wandering a little," the grandfather meekly submitted, and the girl had to make him go on.
In "Adrienne Lecouvreur" it struck me that the careless stage-management utterly ruined the play, and I could not bear to see Duse as Adrienne beautifully dressed while the Princess and the other Court ladies wore cheap red velveteen and white satin and brought the pictorial level of the performance down to that of a "fit-up" or booth. Still, I have been a long time by the way.
Fiske or Duse, while he claimed that Rogers Brothers were better than Booth and Barrett had been in their Prime. She could weep over a Tosti Serenade, and he would walk a Mile at any time to see a good Buck Dance. When they got around to fixing up Invitation Lists, there was more or less Geeing and Hawing. All of his Friends belonged to the Hitemup Division.
It is in the long exchange of stove-side talk between Nora and the other woman of "The Doll's House." Signora Duse may have felt some misgivings as to the effect of a dialogue having so little symmetry, such half-hearted feeling, and, in a word, so little visible or audible drama as this. Needless to say, the misgiving is not apparent; what is too apparent is simply the technique.
And she gives us this as if nature itself came upon the boards, and spoke to us without even the ordinary disguise of human beings in their intercourse with one another. Once more an artificial play becomes sincere; once more the personality of a great impersonal artist dominates the poverty of her part; we get one more revelation of a particular phase of Duse.
There is, however, an exception: when modern drama, instead of merely smuggling us, as by an ignominious King Candaules' ring called a theatre ticket, to witness what we shouldn't, gives us the spectacle of delightful personality, of individual power of soul, in its more intimate and perfect strength. I feel this sometimes in the case of Mme. Duse; and principally in her "Magda."
She had no gift for the stage except beauty, but that produces an illusion of success, and she took her acting with the seriousness of a Duse. "I'm sorry I didn't know Mr. Morrison's habits better," she replied. "I've been studying the part of Galatea a good deal and rehearsing it with him as well. Of course, I don't for a moment wish to prevent Mrs.
The art of Réjane accepts things as they are, without selection or correction; unlike Duse, who chooses just those ways in which she shall be nature. What one remembers are little homely details, in which the shadow, of some overpowering impulse gives a sombre beauty to what is common or ugly. She renders the despair of the woman whose lover is leaving her by a single movement, the way in which she wipes her nose. To her there is but one beauty, truth; and but one charm, energy. Where nature has not chosen, she will not choose; she is content with whatever form emotion snatches for itself as it struggles into speech out of an untrained and unconscious body. In "Sapho" she is the everyday "Venus toute entière
'Yes, and it would be lovely to have Eleanora Duse play the lead, she said, 'and aside from the fact that it's evening in the first act, you're a great technician, she said. I must say I think she was pretty sarcastic. I've been reading up, and I know I could build a cyclorama, if she didn't want to run everything."
I think it was as Olivia that Eleonora Duse first saw me act. She had thought of playing the part herself some time, but she said: "Never now!" No letter about my acting ever gave me the same pleasure as this from her: "Madame, Avec Olivia vous m'avez donné bonheur et peine. Bonheur part votre art qui est noble et sincère ... peine car je sens la tristesse au coeur quand je vois une belle et généreuse nature de femme, donner son âme
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