Eleonora Duse e Matilde Serao, icone della cultura internazionale tra XIX e XX Secolo

Abstract: Between the end of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century the international outline is enlightened by the amazing art of interpretation of the great actress Eleonora Duse and by the passionate engagement in the journalist and literary sphere of the writer Matilde Serao. Various are the exsistential and cultural affinities between Eleonora and Matilde; they are very attached each other by an indissoluble friendship and by dynamic ideas for the renewal of the society and contemporary arts. Both friends preserved their independence from the middle-class conventions and from the literary stereotypes in favour of a new cultural Weltanschauung. Duse’s acting based on the body’s language more than on the word: this innovation influenced the exsperimental stage. From the initial opening to “Verismo”, Matilde Serao overcame the impersonale style and achieved an emotional and psychological description of characters. Against the unfair treatament of the woman and the materialism in the society, Matilde praised Spiritualism and Christian principles.