Playing to the Gods

by Peter Rader

  Duse would rehearse alone, mostly mental preparations, as well as a thorough analysis of the play and the playwright’s intentions. She believed deeply that her style of acting could bring the themes into high relief. But it could never work if her fellow actors did not play along. In fact, by insisting on her own style, Duse would actually be undermining a play’s coherence. So, more often than not, she simply gave up—and did it their way. She posed.

  • • •

  It’s a story as old as theater itself: the star actress gets sick, and the eager understudy is suddenly thrust upon the stage. That’s exactly what happened to Eleonora in 1878, when Eleonora and her father traveled for an extended stay in Naples as part of the respected Ciotti-Belli-Blanes Company. With half a million residents, Naples was the largest city in Italy at the time—a passionate and colorful seaport, ripe with the smell of broiled shrimp on every corner. Within five years, a cholera epidemic from contaminated seafood would claim half the population. For now, the merriment continued.

  One night, Giulia Gritti, prima attrice of the Ciotti-Belli-Blanes Company fell ill. Seconda donna Eleonora, age twenty, was called upon to replace her in an Italian translation of Émile Augier’s Les fourchambault, his final play, which had just had a celebrated debut in Paris. Center stage now, playing a well-written part in a proper, indoor theater, Eleonora felt fully supported for the first time in her life.

  A key part of Eleonora’s style was a sense of freedom and abandon—not just in the way the words rose up within her, but also in the way she used her body. Actors were largely responsible for their own costuming. Duse had thrown away her restrictive corset and adopted loose-fitting gowns that flowed with her movements onstage, sometimes clinging to her body. This was provocative and sensual—and a time when actress and courtesan were often synonymous. Though not quite classically beautiful, Eleonora appeared striking onstage, with dark languid eyes that would suddenly light up with each new intention, and thick brows that were equally expressive. Her jaw was strong, her lips full. In Naples, she was the most alluring she’d ever been—and not simply because the romantic seaport had a way of rose-tinting everything. It was also a matter of technology.

  Neapolitan theaters had recently installed gas footlights. Prior to gas, stages were lit with oil lamps—a fire hazard and also far dimmer, emitting thick black smoke that further contributed to the obscurity. More than twenty rows back, you’d be hard-pressed to read a subtle change in expression—hence the need to act with one’s hands and to enhance the face with strong makeup. Gas illumination allowed for the subtle choices Eleonora was making onstage to be noticed—which is why the Neapolitans were so riveted.

  One of her first admirers was Giovanni Emanuele, a fellow actor, also considered “modern,” and ten years older than Eleonora. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. “Here was a young woman who could grip your heart night after night in the theater and crumple it like a handkerchief,” he once told a colleague. Emanuele was connected to a local principessa, who had recently acquired the best theater in Naples with the intention of forming a new company. Emanuele proposed that Eleonora be invited to join, along with her father.

  Giovanni Emanuele would be primo attore in the new company; the prima donna was Giacinta Pezzana (no relation to Luigi), an established actress of some fame. It was thrilling for Eleonora to share a stage with Giacinta, particularly since the star was not threatened by the newcomer and even became something of a mentor to her.

  They began performing in early 1879, in direct competition with Eleonora’s former company. At one point both companies mounted rival productions of the same play. That play was Hamlet, and, just as Eleonora had soared playing Shakespeare in Verona—heartbreak and human tragedy worked well with her interiorized style—she likewise shined in Naples as Ophelia, gaining national attention from the press. The theatrical review L’arte drammatica reported on April 5: “Eleonora Duse was as ideal as a vision, courtly as a princess, sweet as a maiden, beautiful as Ophelia. She was Ophelia!”

  Echoing Eleonora’s own words about her prior encounter with The Grace (“I was Juliet!”), the Italian publication seemed to have picked up on the actress’s sublimation of her own ego, which was at the heart of what Duse did. Eleonora would disappear, to be “visited” by something else—the spirit of Juliet one time; another time, Ophelia. This was disquieting to many. The theater was an extravagance for the middle class. So when they put down good money to see, say, the great Giacinta Pezzana, they paid to see a star, not to watch her disappear into the character. They expected the queen of Denmark to have a Giacinta Pezzana overlay. But when Giacinta Pezzana and Giovanni Emanuele watched Eleonora receive five curtain calls that first evening in Naples, they sensed the old style was on its way out.

  Eleonora’s work was singled out by Italy’s leading theatrical newspaper: “her way of acting is the truest and most natural that can be imagined.” Another Neapolitan critic wrote: “We trembled, a shudder ran through our body . . . we had not even the courage to applaud. The old doorman of the Teatro dei Fiorentini that evening said to me: ‘Signurì, chesta è essa!’ [Sir, she is it!]”

  • • •

  Eleonora may have been an old soul, but, at age twenty, she was still a typical young woman with romance on her mind and lust in her heart. One night, after a show, Eleonora wandered until sunrise through the streets of Turin. “It was because I needed love!” she explained, “I was seeking love. The thought of returning to my lonely room was impossible. So I walked and walked . . . until dawn broke and fatigue compelled me to seek my bed.”

  She had roamed all alone through the shadowy streets, putting herself both in danger of being accosted and at risk of arrest; an unaccompanied woman was presumed to be a prostitute. One doubts that her father knew about it at the time—but even if he had, it’s unlikely that Alessandro would have tried to stop Eleonora. He had learned long ago that he could no longer control his willful daughter. At sixty, his body was tired—too tired even to defend his daughter’s honor, should it come to that. And it did.

  • • •

  Eleonora was smitten the moment she set eyes on him. He came backstage to congratulate her, like the many other would-be Romeos, but there was something different about Martino Cafiero. At thirty-eight, he was worldly, sophisticated. He dressed elegantly in dark tones, not like the typical Neapolitan dandies with their brightly colored cravats. Martino was brilliant, and supremely literate. An entrepreneur, he had founded Corriere del mattino, one of the most popular newspapers in Naples. He worked as its editor and wrote a lyrical daily column, which Eleonora read religiously. This was the first true writer she had ever met, and Eleonora adored writers almost as much as she adored reading their words.

  As a man about town, Martino escorted Eleonora to places she had never been—the yacht club, the museum. From a childhood of abject poverty, Eleonora suddenly found herself in opulent salons with liveried servants pouring the most expensive wines—it was head-spinning. But what really impressed Eleonora was when Martino took her to the newspaper offices, which every night became a sort of literary salon of writers and journalists, with lively discussions about the affairs of the day. Though unschooled, Eleonora was bright and enjoyed the stimulation. She felt honored that Martino had taken an interest in her, initiating her into a world of ideas. As a colleague noted: “There was always an element of worship in Duse’s love affairs.”

  Eleonora could not have avoided hearing about Martino’s reputation as a philanderer. She had made her first female friend in Naples: Matilde Serao—a successful journalist and writer whose work had appeared in Cafiero’s Corriere del mattino. Matilde knew of Martino’s reputation, but there was nothing she could say to diminish Eleonora’s infatuation with him. A common attitude among affluent young men was that ingénues could be bought—enjoyed for a season and discarded. But Eleonora felt that in his heart Martino was an artist like she. She trusted him. It ended badly.

  The breakup bega
n with the dissolution of Eleonora’s acting company—following the sudden departure of the lead actor, Giovanni Emanuele. Giacinta Pezzana, now a free agent, had suitors from other companies lining up to entice the prima donna away. She chose to go with Cesare Rossi, who ran the most prestigious acting company in Italy. Giacinta persuaded Rossi to take Eleonora, too, along with her father.

  Duse was thrilled but also torn, for it meant leaving Naples. Martino assured her that they would stay in touch, and she believed him. She could not afford to be too sentimental, after all—if she and her father missed a season, they would go hungry. So Duse signed a contract with Cesare Rossi. She and her father would be traveling north to Turin’s Teatro Carignano, one of the oldest and most famous in Italy.

  • • •

  Martino wasn’t at the train station to see her off. Duse was devastated. She hadn’t told a soul about the child on the way, certainly not her father. It began as a suspicion; she hadn’t known for certain until after agreeing to join Rossi. Eleonora had hoped, however improbably, that Martino would show up at the last moment to take responsibility. But she boarded the train alone.

  As she began rehearsals for the new season with Rossi’s company, Eleonora grew more and more anxious. She wrote Martino a series of increasingly desperate letters:

  “Save me from the solitude of my silent room . . .”

  “Speak to me with truth, with sincerity, like a man . . .”

  “Think of what is in me that is yours. Oh Martino, Martino! Is this love! Is this—a father?”

  She received no response. By June, her pregnancy apparent to all, Eleonora had to leave the stage and quietly disappear. Unlike in Paris where social conventions were far more relaxed, to have a baby out of wedlock in Italy brought disgrace to both the mother and her family. It was even a crime, in some parts, punishable by flogging and imprisonment. With reports to the newspaper that she had taken ill, Eleonora secretly departed to a sleepy seaside town in Tuscany where she could deliver the child without scrutiny. She gave birth to a boy at the ospizio, a foundling home to which she would be forced to surrender the child, although still required to pay for his care. It was a difficult labor that left her spent.

  Still in love with Martino despite his indifference, and dreaming, perhaps, of an eventual reconciliation, Eleonora named the boy Mario, his father’s pen name. She arranged for a photograph to be taken of her and the child, which she promptly dispatched to Naples. But Martino returned the photograph to her with a single word scrawled upon it (commediante, “comedian”), implying that Eleonora was putting on an “act”—the way a whore would. To add to her heartbreak, the boy lived only a few days.

  As was often the case in an ospizio, Duse had been largely prohibited from interacting with her child. The newborn had been handed off to the wet nurses, who typically saved their best breast milk for their own children, feeding the orphans afterward. Many died of neglect. Mario’s death was another blow to an already despairing and sickly Eleonora, who became suicidal and may well not have survived were it not for the arrival of her friend Matilde Serao.

  Some years later, Martino, true to his scoundrel self, published a roman à clef about his affair with Duse and the unwanted pregnancy in his newspaper.

  • • •

  Following her Tuscan convalescence, Eleonora returned to Turin, where she found herself promoted to prima donna. Cesare Rossi had little choice in the matter; he had lost Giacinta Pezzana, his star, to another company. Eleonora did not, however, receive a raise, as Rossi had the Duses (both father and daughter) locked into a fixed contract of 7,250 lire per annum (about $25,000 today). Eleonora had no say in her repertoire and was forced to play melodramas—they drew the largest crowds but depressed her.

  Desperate for stability and support, Eleonora sought comfort in the arms of Tebaldo Checchi, a fellow actor in the company who had been with Eleonora in Naples, where he had witnessed her humiliating tryst with Cafiero. Unlike the dashing writer, Tebaldo was not particularly intelligent, nor sophisticated—but he was caring and kind, which is exactly what Eleonora needed. As Tebaldo described their relationship in a letter: “seeing her so alone, so sad . . . fighting poverty . . . I paid her court, and fell in love for the first time in my life.”

  Though never more than a competent bit player, Tebaldo had worked steadily over the years and managed to save some money, which he happily spent on his new love, purchasing a wardrobe befitting a prima donna. “What can humanly be done to make a woman happy, I did,” he wrote immodestly, “and I did it with love.”

  Though Eleonora did not return Tebaldo’s feelings, she agreed to marry him. They were wed on September 7, 1881, to her father’s relief. Alessandro was freed of the burden of chaperoning his headstrong and passionate daughter—who was, once again, pregnant. Now she would be Tebaldo’s problem.

  The Neapolitan did his valiant best for a number of years, but the marriage was doomed from the start. Eleonora soon acquired other lovers—and it was Tebaldo whose reputation suffered for it. As Matilde Serao wrote: “How much whispered slander and open ridicule fell about Tebaldo Checchi’s ears on account of this marriage! In secret he was called ‘the pimp.’ ”

  Tebaldo maintained his dignity by becoming ever more devoted to his wife, convincing himself of the nobility of his role as “watchful protector of that chosen creature.” In an account he wrote some time later, Tebaldo explained how he “stood before her, protected her with his body, and took on himself all those troubles, which are unavoidable for a rising actress.” They were still viewed as playthings for moneyed bachelors.

  Their child, a girl, was born on January 7, 1882: Enrichetta Checchi Duse. Though her baby was healthy, Eleonora became gravely ill after the birth, sinking again into postpartum depression. Less than two years had passed since her tragic liaison with Martino; Eleonora still had vivid memories of her poor, unbaptized dead son. When Tebaldo saw his new wife withering, he dispatched the newborn to the countryside where she would be suckled by a surrogate—successfully this time—while he nursed his wife back to health. Little by little, Eleonora began to feel better; then, after a few weeks, she heard some news that had her practically leaping from her bed.

  Rossi would be giving them some time off—the entire month of February, in fact, an extremely long hiatus for a repertoire company. Tebaldo explained that Rossi had leased out the Teatro Carignano for the month to a touring company.

  “Which one?” asked Eleonora.

  “It’s Bernhardt,” replied Tebaldo.

  Duse was speechless.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Friends thought Bernhardt had gone mad. They didn’t understand what she saw in her new lover. The woman who had been with princes and emperors was now on the arm of Aristides “Jacques” Damala, a midlevel military attaché from the Greek embassy. The scion of a wealthy shipping family, Damala had squandered his inheritance on gambling, prostitutes, and an increasingly pricey morphine habit. With his pirate mustache and trimmed beard, he had a reputation as the handsomest man in Europe. Damala’s womanizing had led to several divorces, a suicide, and a string of broken hearts—which is what made Sarah so curious to meet him.

  It happened after her sold-out tour of America continued onto its European leg in 1881. They were introduced by Sarah’s younger sister Jeanne, who ran in Damala’s morphine circles. Each was keen to seduce the other. As Madame Pierre Berton wrote in her biography of Sarah:

  Bernhardt prided herself on her ability to conquer men, to reduce them to the level of slaves; Damala vaunted his ability as a hunter and a spoiler of women. . . . Damala boasted to his friends that, as soon as he looked at her, the great Sarah Bernhardt would be counted in his long list of victims; and Bernhardt was no less certain that she had only to command for Damala to succumb.

  When they met, Bernhardt, accustomed to fawning admirers, was appalled by Damala’s cool reserve, which Sarah took for insolence. Yet she was still strongly attracted to him and soon fell in love w
ith the Greek, who dropped his diplomatic job in early 1882 to follow Sarah’s company with the aspiration of joining her on the stage. After meeting Sarah, the vain Damala had begun to take bit parts as an actor in the hopes of becoming a star—a laughable ambition, given his lack of talent, poor technique, and unintelligible Greek accent. But Bernhardt, blind to his shortcomings, installed Damala as her new leading man. Prowess in bed was as good a reason as any to invite a man onto the stage with her. Talent was secondary. In fact, Sarah preferred to surround herself with lesser actors, so she could shine more brightly. Having already toured the rest of Europe, Sarah was now heading toward the final Italian leg, which began in Turin.

  • • •

  The parade through the stage door was impressive. Racks of exotic costumes, oriental rugs, tapestries, a menagerie of animals from pumas to parakeets . . . Eleonora stared, giddy, from the backstage shadows. It was like a circus. Her little dressing room had been transformed into a boudoir befitting an empress. When would “She” arrive? The Divine One! It was a moniker her fans had given her early on, perhaps suggested by Sarah herself or by one of her cronies. “People spoke only of her in town, in the salons, at the theatre,” Duse recalled. Bernhardt had spent considerable sums on advance publicity for this tour; Eleonora was impressed by what she had read. At thirty-seven, Bernhardt ran her own company, deciding everything from scenery to costumes, fellow actors to props. Most importantly, Sarah was now in control of her own repertoire.

  To Eleonora’s delight, Bernhardt planned to open her run in Turin with La Dame aux camélias, her most famous role. Camille, as Alexandre Dumas fils’s play was also known, had a plot that was deeply personal to Sarah: a courtesan attempts to give up her errant ways when she finds true love, but the bourgeois world will not accept her, and the courtesan dies alone. Parallels to Bernhardt’s past were well known; in fact, she flaunted them, which had caused trouble for her in America—a moralistic backlash in certain quarters that only fueled ticket sales.