A NEW ZEALANDER ABROAD.

Otago Witness, Issue 2677, 5 July 1905, Page 79

A NEW ZEALANDER ABROAD.

Bx Gamma.

TWO ACTRESSES. Tie Parisians have just had the pleasure Df a visit from Eleanora Duse, the great Italian tragedienne, and the papers are full of ecstatic appreciations of her. The temptation to draw comparisons between ker and Sara Bernhardt is too pressing to be resisted, as both actresses are almost of the same age, though the Italian has probably a few years' advantage, and as both frequently play the same roles. The part of Magda, for instance, in Sudermann's "Heimat " is a favourite with both, and Marguerite Gautkr, in the "Dame aux Canielias," which was long supposed to be Sara Bernhardt's best role, is played also by the Duse. So the visiting actress, playing these parts, as it were, on her rival's groxind, almost challenged the comparison that was inevitably made. She did not suffer by it; the -French-papers, fastidious critics as they must be after these may years of Sara Bernhardfs -acting, have vet lauded their famous guest to the skies. She has taken their impressioaable and entfausias.tic hearts by storm, and they have bestowed on her all the warmth of praise <rf which" their Trench •language, with its abundance of adjectives, is capable. Shej has played, besides Magda and Marguerite Gautier, Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler," I*inero's "Second Mrs Tanqueray," and a little Italian piece, called "Locandiera." In the last of these she presented a character which would, in the hands of the great Parisian, have been more or les-s a failure; she infused into it a soft, yet scintillant gaiety and charm, which, though essentially the prerogative of youth, has yet lingered with this wonderful woman. Sara Bernhardt has not this quality; all that is languorous and sensuous, strong, proud, vindictive, or transcendently passionate she has at command, but this little fine point that the other has she, at least of late, has not shown. Yet she, too, is of a marvellous youthfulness; she must now be 61 years old—the Duse, I bglieve, -is about 55—yet she still plays fittingly the part of a young girl. In "La Sorciere," for instance)" she plays the title role, that of a woman of 20. "Certainly she has all the aids and adjuncts of French art to help her, but that she can do it, even with these, so as to make *he most watchful observer ask himself whether she is really not just 20 herself, that is the astonishing thing. Those who have watched her for many years say that they see, signs of age -about her, that her figure has lost Some of its giace, and her voice, "la voix dor" —the voice of gold —some of its <&ann; but those who -see her for the fcst time find her a marvel itill. " In, "La Sorciere," Sardou's great piece, the opening is a moonlight scene, with the so-called "sorceress" waiting to meet her lover. She is diessed in a oeautiful gown of pale green and silver gauze, and holds in her arms a sheaf of lilies ; her wonderfal tawny golden hair hangs about her face and on her shoulders. The dress is of the ctvje she so often affects —clinging, and falling close to her fett, with a girdle round the hips. From the freshness of her ardent young love in that first Icene she passes through the whole gamut of human passion —at one time hunted and in danger of her life, at another "cringed to and courted, but most splendid and" most lurid of all in the terrible st'cne where her lover is tortured in the room adjoining hers For it is in the times of the Spanish Inquisition, and in Spain itself; and, by one of the refinements of cruelty of those terrible times, the sound of her iGver's irrepressible groans of pain in the torturo chamber is used to extract from xhis poor anguished •woman the confession the Grand Inquisition are seeking. In this scene Sara Bernhardt is superb; she is no longer the actress in an assumed role —she is that woman whose part she plays, and the struggle she passes through leaves her, Sara Bernhardt, physically exhausted, as it must have left La Sorciere herself. As long as she can she obeys her lover' 3 voice, exhorting I'er, from the adjoining chamber, not to tell, but she endures worse than his anguish while she obeys ; for him she grovels and .implores as she never could have done for herself, till, finally, she can «adure no longer the thought of his suffering, and she makes the confession which, »-vaa, in releasing him,, seals their separa- '■ iion. "In the end she has to meet the doom of- martyrdom that fell to so many innocent in -those awful times, but even j at the moment of her burning at the stake she is calm as compared with that night when she climbed to the pinnacle of vicari- ■ ous suffering. j Such is Sara. Bernhardt ; she will paint you, as perhaps no other can, all that is {;rand and magnificent and large in human eeliug and passion. Her representation of Marie Antoinette in that trying time when King and Queen were prisoners in their own palace ; their plotting, their futile attempt to flee, and their piteous return, is full of a certain pathetic majesty. The dignity and repc*e of the injured Queen, irhen she could no longer trust even those whose hands vrere about her daily, and who lived under her roof, make one of the most touching parts she plays. Of late she has not often played L'Aiglon, tme of her well known parts ; it was said ; that she found herself too old now to play the role of this young stripling, but she has lately refuted this rumour by playing |t again, and with much success. • One great beauty in Sara Bernhardt is lier voice; It is what the French call S'frainant." "clinging and vibrant, with a jbertain prolonged sound like the sustained aotes of a violin. Eleanora Duse has not Jjhis wonderful quality of tone; her voice ftff cx9^e °* much variation, and in pas- ' .P^ate moments she utters strange disfomted cries, like those of an animal. II £he were not so great an actress they ■would be grotesque, but with her they seem, the natural expression, of intense feeling. The supreme charm of the Di.se is her grace. Like Sara Bernhardt, she has a Jtt&g #nd.jaliaufc figjirej irot there, js some-

thing more statuesque about her ; I have lemained charmed for a whole evening, not knowing one word of Italian, but content to watch her move about the a;tage, enjoying all the expressiveness of those beautiful hands — they are said to be the most beautiful in Europe— and the significance alike of movement and stillness. Certain attitudes of hers, to all appeaiance calm, have yet a strange power of expressing a fire of emotion underlying them ; in°this curious stillness of ■ motion she is a past-mistress, and in this lies, probably, her unique power.