Eleonora Duse by Helen Sheehy

Author:Helen Sheehy [Sheehy, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-48422-2
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2003-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

In d'Annunzio's La Gioconda, c. 1899–1900

Where was d'Annunzio while she was defending his play? “Me?” d'An-nunzio told his friend Scarfoglio, “I was busy raping a nun!” In fact, while Duse was onstage, he had a “quick fuck” in the dressing room of a young actress who played a sister of charity in the play. Duse heard about the remark and the fornication, and she was furious.

Without explaining his own contribution to Duse's state of mind, d'Annunzio complained to his friend Angelo Conti that Duse was unjust, cruel, saw only lies and deceit around her, and had been possessed by a “bad demon that gives her no peace.” When La Giocondawas received warmly in Venice in May, Duse was still upset with him and with the mismanagement of the tour. D'Annunzio continued to gather material for Il fuoco, noting the hiss of her voice; her white, contorted face; her poisonous sarcasm; and the jeering bitterness of her laughter.

When the tour closed in Turin, Duse wrote a note to Zacconi. “Among all the poverty of the environment, among the errors, among the many injustices of these days, what remains with me only in my heart, is the memory of you, dear companion, who was perfect and noble towards every attempt at art that we tried to carry out.”

While Duse talked of art, others talked incessantly about the Duse-d'Annunzio alliance, which was written up in the newspapers and gossiped about in drawing rooms from Boston to London to Paris to Florence. The popular press printed speculation and gossip as fact. “The Duse's Own Sad Tragedy,” announced a headline in the Boston Record, purporting to have the latest news from Paris. “She loves, without hope, d'Annunzio, the novelist… passion is eating her away.”

“Have the Duse and d'Annunzio broken?” Isabella Stewart Gardner wrote from Massachusetts to Bernard Berenson in Florence. “Poor Duse! I wish someone would kick d'Annunzio for me.”

D'ANNUNZIO TALKED HIMSELF back into Duse's good graces, and they spent the summer in Settignano and on the coast of Pisa. With his “dear, dear companion” and muse at his side, d'Annunzio felt happy and blessed and composed some of his most beautiful poems.

“I love your life, Gabri,” Duse said. “Your genius and your soul.”

In August 1899, Duse left their Tuscan retreat to return to work. For an extended tour in which she planned to introduce La Gioconda to Europe, she joined the company of the scholar and actor Luigi Rasi, who ran a theatre school in Florence. Her old companion Carlo Rosaspina, the character actor Ciro Galvani, and Duse's administrator Ettore Mazzanti were the principal male leads.

Her collaboration with Rasi began badly. The two had little in common. Unlike Duse, Rasi had not been raised in the theatre—he was an academy-trained actor, and his manner toward Duse was extremely deferential and obsequious. Duse thought Rasi “mediocre” and insincere, and believed his company was taking advantage of her. She wrote d'Annunzio she would have to take up her whip to get them in shape. Rasi and

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