Volume 50, Number 20 · December 18, 2003
Duse Plays the Palace
By Robert Gottlieb
Eleonora Duse
by Helen Sheehy
Knopf, 380 pp., $32.50
Early romantic accounts tell us that the world-renowned actress Eleonora Duse was born, in 1858, in a train, an appropriate setting for someone who was to spend most of her life on the move. But no, she was born in the northern Italian town of Vigevano. (A later international icon, Rudolf Nureyev, actually was born in a train—and his life was as nomadic, contradictory, and highly charged as hers.) In fact, there was nothing romantic about Eleonora's childhood; it was hard in every way.
Review, 4991 words
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