Draft:Great stage actresses of the 19th century

A poster by Alphonse Mucha for La Dame aux Camélias starring Sarah Bernhardt

Stage art of several great actresses of the 19th century, as e.g. Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, Ellen Terry and Helena Modjeska, developed into an artistic-social phenomenon with emphasis on expressing and evoking emotions. This trend was common especially in the second half of the 19th century, the Fin de siècle era.

Definition

Grand theatrical art of the 19th century was a type of theatre performance that served as a vehicle for the main star, eventually stars. Playwrights and stage directors of this epoch were there to serve performers and their needs to create the desired emotion. The looks, voice, persona, name, style and fame of the star often created the overall concept of the role and the entire performance. Stars, their personalities and sometimes even legends around them (as well as contemporary film stars today), shaped the overall impression and understanding of the dramatic form presented on stage. Stage actors, and actresses even more so, achieved global and popularity and fame, which they soon after lost to film actors.

The dominant interpretation genre was melodrama, even for dramatic texts that came from other periods (e.g. Shakespeare’s Othello). Acting focused on expression of feelings and emotional imagination of the audience, arousing of sensibility, and sentimentalism as the key artistic concept.

Realism, psychology and other elements of modern theater were suppressed. The idea was to let the spectator empathize with a strong passionate, often even destructive emotion, the legitimacy of which was ensured by the reputation of the main star.

Grand theatre was only one of the directions of the 19th century theatre art, which by itself exhausted its artistic possibilities. But it carries a strong legacy in other artistic disciplines (opera, film). In this period, men had the same opportunities for realization as women, but there was a focus on female themes and expressing emotions, and the presence of a number of great female artistic personalities.

Grand acting practice

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  Sarah Bernhardt as Doña Sol in Hernani
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  Eleonora Duse
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  Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, based on an 1888 production
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  Helena Modjeska

All these actresses performed characters in a category of “tragic heroine” or “salon lady” (examples of these roles are mentioned later). Acting at that time was divided into "characters" (”emploi” in French, “Fach” in German, similar to a “stock character”), i.e. sets of roles requiring similar physical appearance, voice, temperament, sensitivity, and similar characteristics. Actors in a particular "character" did not need to search for and build a role. A set of gestures, voice mannerisms etc. were enough for them to express the outer of the psychology of the character. However, great actresses often played the same popular show-off roles and performed them on their tours around Europe or the world. These roles were dangerous because the audience got opportunity to compare the performance of one actress with the previous artist. All these roles were luxuriously dressed women, queens, aristocrats and ladies of the great world. And actresses had to play them in lavish design gowns. Director Heinrich Laube complained about the actresses’ obsession to appear on stage in the most magnificent costumes possible. He sarcastically mocked a great tragedian who depicted a scene of suffering and desolation in a costume richly made of velvet and silk and with a long train.

The vast majority of theater productions were business projects dependent on ticket revenue. Theatre directors and agents had to cast stars or actors with star potential to attract audiences. Over time, some stars, like Bernhardt, became independent and produced their own shows. Some stars, like Terry, depended on repertoire choices of their theater group leaders. (Eg. Terry longed to play Rosalind but actor and manager Henry Irving didn’t approve of her choice as he didn’t find a suitable role for himself in As You Like It).

Most actresses developed their acting style directly on stage. Some of them had tutors, others depended on their intuition or learned by imitating more successful actresses. However, there was no uniform acting style. Some actresses, like Eleonora Duse or Ellen Terry, became timeless examples of high quality acting. They became masters of role interpretation and often emphasized the psychological nuances of the characters they played. Some, like Charlotte Wolter, were criticized by some critics as too flamboyant and mannerist even in their time.

Many great actresses used their persona as the leading interpretation of their particular roles, no matter in whatever play they were in. Similarly as Hollywood stars of the 1930s and 1940s (Marlene Dietrich or Joan Crawford). They didn’t strive for versatility and avoided risky casting choices. Their task, or the task of their agent, was in casting them into roles where their personal brand would fit and shine. It could have been an extensive dying scene at the end of amorous suffering. Many dramatists learned to incorporate these scenes into their plays to suit the actresses’ demands (many of those dramas became libretti for operas, as Dumas’ La Dame aux Camélias into Verdi’s La Traviata, or Sardou’s Tosca into Puccini’s opera of the same name).

Actresses often toured other language regions. There, they were performing in their mother tongue, so the audience watched a several-hour production without often understanding the dramatic text. That's why they had their permanent repertoire of well-known plots, which was easy to understand even without knowledge of the language. At the same time, these plays often had very long dialogues, often in verses (blank verse, alexandrine) and the actress had to showcase the beauty of the verse with a dramatic delivery that was captivating.

The actresses used the modulation and timbre of their voice (close to the performance of an opera singer, some of them as Agatha Bârsescu were also opera singers) and large gestures (with some features of physical theatre).

Another important feature of the theatre practice was that the audience could see each other, because the lighting technology did not allow the auditorium to be completely dimmed (at least not until the electrification of theatres in 1880s). The audience could thus experience emotions as a group, publicly and share them.

Notable examples

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  Maria Pospischil as Victorien Sardou's Fedora
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  ”Heroines of German stage”, a group portrait of German and Austrian actresses by Richard Ernst Kepler
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  Charlotte Wolter as Maria Stuart
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  Klara Ziegler as Friedrich Schiller's The Maid of Orleans

The most notorious example was French actress Sarah Bernhardt. She is believed to be the first global celebrity, becoming renowned both in Europe and the USA. Other important actresses of this era were Italian Eleonora Duse, British Ellen Terry and Polish-American Helena Modjeska. These stage actresses often crossed their language regions and toured Europe and gained fame in many countries, although they were performing their repertoire in their mother tongue. There actresses were no longer tied to a single country but rather turned themselves into global icons.

There were other famous theatre stars, for example Lillie Langtry in Great Britain or Gabrielle Réjane in France. In German speaking countries Charlotte Wolter became a star at the Hofburg theatre in Vienna, Anna Haverland and Helene Odilon gained fame in Berlin and Klara Ziegler in Munich. Maria Pospischil was a great actress of Hamburg. These "provincial" stars mostly did not reach beyond their region, although some of them made successful tours abroad (Haverland toured New York and both Réjane and Pospischil toured repeatedly London; all gained great success although Réjane was performing in French, and Pospischil and Haverland in German).

Style

This acting style was based on a big star who performed the destiny of the main female character of the drama in her own style.

Many great actresses presented themselves first, and then that particular role, no matter in whatever play they were in. Similarly as Hollywood stars of the 1930s and 1940s (Marlene Dietrich or Joan Crawford). Their task, or the task of their agent was in casting them into roles where their personal brand would fit into the particular role. It could have been an extensive dying scene at the end of amorous suffering. Many dramatists learned to incorporate these scenes into their plays to suit the actresses’ demands (many of those dramas became libretti for operas, as Dumas’ La Dame aux Camelias into Verdi’s La Traviata, or Sardou’s La Tosca into Puccini’s opera of the same name).

This acting style was often later described as derogatory, as mannerist, unrealistic, and superficial. But, theatre acting, as a transient artistic expression, changes and develops. What one generation considers progressive, subsequent generations condemn as outdated. In its time, grand acting must have had its justification, that's why it became so popular and some names of that era are still synonymous with acting.

Lookism was a strong stigma of this art form. Next to her acting performance, each star was heavily depending on her good looks, with her beauty and sex-appeal being her only asset at the beginning of her career. A showing example could Viennese star Charlotte Wolter who got her first stage success in Timișoara, mainly thanks to her charming appearance and attractiveness for officers of the nearby garrison. She came to Vienna, where Johann Nepomuk Nestroy hired her as an extra and for small roles at the Carl Theater.

Many of these productions were fashion shows as much as theatrical performances. House of Worth was one of the early fashion houses to provide high-end lavish gowns for actresses. Another great example is Alphonse Mucha’s costume and jewelry design for Bernhardt’s Théodora (Mucha became more famous for creating several posters for Bernhardt’s shows). The German word Toilettenkünstlerin (artist of fashion, specifically actress) shows the expectations and the critique of this concept.

The theatre had a great feature of femininity (emphasis on visual impression, precision, costume design, female sexuality and aesthetics, expressing emotions, feeling touched and crying as an audience response, and the presence of a number of great female artistic personalities. Some interpretations claim that during most of the nineteenth century the theatre was supposed to offer a strongly erotic experience to men and service to their fantasies.

Repertoire

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  French postcard from the beginning of the 20th century presenting Othello about to kill Desdemona]
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  Georges Jules Victor Clairin’s painting of the character of Frou-Frou
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  Sarah Bernhardt as La Tosca
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  Maria Pospischil as Friedrich Schiller's Maria Stuart

Maria Pospischil’s guest star role list with her Berlin agent contact (similar to contemporary opera singers’

Actresses (the same as opera singers today) had a set of roles they could perform both with their own troupe or as a guest star with another company.

Plays with a strong melodramatic potential were most valued concepts, those embracing such emotion-evoking concepts as sacrifice, infidelity, separation, revenge and forgiveness. Popular dramatic texts allowed actresses to show strong and overwhelming emotions and experience great passions and, especially those in the style of a well-made play, weren’t intellectually or emotionally challenging. The charisma of the performer dominated the text.

According to the typology of the actress, it could be a long final redeeming dying scene (La Dame aux Camélias), a scene of suffering and defiling purity (Desdemona), a moment of broken pride and self-awareness (Magda in Heimat) or a scene in which the heroine showed great cruelty (Lady Macbeth) etc. All these plays, although written by men, focus fully or substantially on women's understanding of the world, experiences, values and perception of the world, and with a leading woman presenting these topics, the grand drama was also an empowering experience for the female audience.

A whole series of dramas emerged that placed a woman in the focus. French dramatists often depicted shocking settings of the demimonde, courtesans, fallen women, harlot/saint dichotomy or penitent sinners - Dumas’ La Dame aux Camélias (a story of a courtesan who falls in love and decides to leave her past behind but fails and eventually dies - the original actress for the role of Marguerite Gautier, Eugénie Doche, played the role over six hundred times) or Meilhac and Halévy’s Frou-Frou (a play about a high society wife that is treated as a plaything; when she perceives that her husband prefers her sister, she runs away with her lover. French playwright Victorien Sardou wrote his tragedies Fédora, Théodora and La Tosca for Sarah Bernhardt, and Madame Sans-Gêne for Gabrielle Réjane.

German drama tended more towards social criticism, duties and freedom of women and presentation of the New Woman - Sudermann’s Heimat (outcast daughter returns home as a famous artist, refuses a marriage offer from the man who ruined her). In both cases, as French writer Jules Janin noted: “Respectable women want to know how other women live and die.”

Eleonora Duse also found a deep interest in interpreting Ibsen’s heroines - Nora in A Doll’s House, Rebecca West in Rosmersholm, and, above all, Ellida in The Lady from the Sea. Other actresses of the big stage mostly found Ibsen too obscure or intimate.

Among the older dramatic works, Shakespeare’s ability to broadcast human vices, and his linguistic and emotional opulence suited the actresses' demands for a role (especially plays as Othello, Macbeth, As You Like It). Esp. in the first half of the 19th century many English actresses also took the challenge to play the titular Hamlet, or the male lead in Romeo and Juliet, as Charlotte Cushman. This cross-dressing practice, however, was common mostly in Britain, and only to certain roles.

From the classical German repertoire, Schiller’s Maria Stuart and Grillparzer’s Sappho were particularly popular among German actresses.

At the same time, modern drama began to emerge outside the epicenter of theatrical activity, northern and eastern Europe. A Doll's House by Ibsen was first produced in 1879. First production of Strindberg’s Miss Julie was staged in 1889. Chekhov's comedy The Seagull premiered in 1896. These plays required a completely different type of participation from the audience, more subtle and more attentive to the context of the play. They pointed to the need for social change or the absurdity of human existence, and meant the new direction of European theatre.

Social position of actresses

Edgar Degas’ 1880 pastel “Two Dancers and Two Men” depicts a scene of seduction or soliciting at theatre

Top actresses often maintained extravagant theatrical lifestyles to draw attention to their stage art and they were expected to be fashion icons and social influencers. Most notably Sarah Bernhardt, said to be the first global celebrity, kept a little ZOO of exotic animals even on her travels, had a satin-lined coffin in her bedroom, and occasionally slept in it or lay in it to study her roles.

High-status actresses had certain social concessions from rigid Victorian morality. Bourgeois society accepted this as fact without the usual moralizing. Both Bernhardt and Terry openly raised their children born out of wedlock without being shamed.

On the other hand, many actresses (also dancers and women in theatre in general) were often considered modern-day courtesans providing sexual favour to rich male theatre-goers. Not only did actresses often play fallen women (women from a better society were interested in lives of "the others"), they also got a dubious reputation of morally loose attitude.

As part of the theatre production at the time, actresses had to provide luxurious gowns and costumes at their own expense, and the society required the actress to have a new set of gowns for each role, one dress for each act (men often got by with a tailcoat, a summer suit and a set of uniforms, and their historical costumes being provided by the theatre). This fashion design pressure often caused even the very successful ones to seek rich patrons to sponsor them. The luxury of the star enhanced her theater's prestige. “Are you also having relationships?” the director of a city theatre of good repute recently asked a poor creature who was supposed to play his first lover, casting a critical eye at her simple street dress. Cooks are often required by their rigorous mistresses not to have any jewels. Conversely, a jewel of an actress is also a jewel of her theatre director.

Marriage could be also difficult for actresses of both high and lower ranks. “A large number of actresses' contracts have stated that marriage is an immediate reason for termination. … This basically means that at least the smaller stages take into account the sexual attractiveness of their actresses, and that the sexual interest of the men's world is weakened if the actress in question does not necessarily appear to be "free" but is officially claimed by a marriage alliance.”

Unlike Hollywood studio actresses, stage divas were not exploited by theatre managers as their power was often bigger and casting couch practices were rather rare. The social imagination figured theatre women as mistresses of powerful men who became their influential protectors, politicians, aristocrats and diplomats. This practice was both quietly tolerated and loudly criticized.

Young Sarah Bernhardt kept several lovers at the same time. She even developed various tricks to extract extra money from her patrons, eg. she would puncture her gums with a needle to be later discovered with blood on a handkerchief held up to her mouth.

Czech-German actress Maria Pospischil was rumoured to be mistress of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I and Czech Count Franz, Prince of Thun and Hohenstein who was selecting his mistresses from artistic circles.

Critique of grand acting

This acting style was often later described as derogatory, as mannerist, unrealistic, and superficial. But, theatre acting, as a transient artistic expression, changes and develops. What one generation considers progressive, subsequent generations condemn as outdated. In its time, grand acting must have had its justification, that's why it became so popular and some names of that era are still synonymous with acting.

Lookism was a strong stigma of this art form. Next to her acting performance, each star was heavily depending on her good looks, with her beauty and sex-appeal being her only asset at the beginning of her career. A showing example could Viennese star Charlotte Wolter who got her first stage success in Timișoara, mainly thanks to her charming appearance and attractiveness for officers of the nearby garrison.

Many of these productions were fashion shows as much as theatrical performances. House of Worth was one of the early fashion houses to provide high-end lavish gowns for actresses. Another great example is Alphonse Mucha’s costume and jewelry design for Bernhardt’s Théodora (Mucha became more famous for creating several posters for Bernhardt’s shows). The German word Toilettenkünstlerin (artist of fashion, specifically women) shows the expectations and the critique of this concept.

The grand acting style gradually began to disappear at the beginning of the 20th century, and was replaced by contemporary trends, such as the avant-garde expressionismof Max Reinhardt or the realism of Konstantin Stanislavski. These styles favored a comprehensive, unified approach to theatrical production. The actors had to follow the director's requirements in their acting style, costumes and overall conception of their roles. Grand acting definitely lost its reputation during World War I. A reflection of this stage star style survived in Hollywood glamor stars.