Sheehy (Eva Le Gallienne: A Biography) once again shows acute understanding of actresses in this extravagantly emotional study of Eleonora Duse (1858–1924). Sheehy's operatic prose captures the "ecstatic abandonment" Duse displayed in her portrayals and her personal life. Born into an Italian acting family, she suffered hunger and deprivation, but was bolstered by her mother, a "ministering angel." In 1873, at 14, she scored her first major stage success as Juliet. Sheehy brings Duse alive to modern readers by explaining that the performer was "not afraid to show the ugliness of tears, the awkwardness of anguish and the urgency of sexual passion." That passion plunged her into numerous affairs. An early lover, Martino Cafiero, refused to marry her when she became pregnant. After the infant's death, Duse became involved with Tebaldo Checchi (who became her husband), Verdi librettist Arrigo Boito, Russian Count Alexander Wolkoff and poet/novelist Gabriele d'Annunzio. Sheehy makes clear that Duse embraced these men partially because they could help her career and social position. Descriptions of Duse's debilitating physical ailments are affecting, and her rivalry with Sarah Bernhardt is powerfully depicted as "more like a collision than a meeting... a mad wrestling match." Sometimes Sheehy goes overboard on purple images, as when she reports "d'Annunzio equated his artistic outbursts... with the spurt of his semen." But her heated emotional treatment is the ideal literary equivalent of Duse's volatile nature. Sheehy's astute analyses and well-chosen quotes make this book valuable to acting students, as well as those fascinated by the internal contradictions that torture and uplift creative geniuses. Photos. (Aug.)
