Volume 31, Number 15 · October 11, 1984
Super Trouper
By John Russell
Duse: A Biography
by William Weaver
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 383 pp., $19.95
Neither in life nor on the stage did Eleonora Duse (1858–1924) correspond to the popular idea of a 'great actress.' Never did she look at the audience the way Vladimir Horowitz used to look at the piano, with a sublime ferocity. 'With her looks,' an experienced impresario said of her in her youth, 'she will never make a career on the stage.' Even her lovers did not think that she was goodlooking. Gabriele D'Annunzio—admittedly one of the most odious men of the century—was no sooner reunited with her after a long absence than he wrote in his notebook that she had 'a wretched little chin.'
Review, 2569 words
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