Playing to the Gods is the riveting true story of the rivalry between the two most renowned actresses of the 19th century: legendary Sarah Bernhardt, whose eccentricity on and off the stage made her the original diva, and mystical Eleonora Duse, who broke all the rules to popularize the natural style of acting we celebrate today.
Sarah Bernhardt was a French stage actress who starred in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including La Dame Aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas, fils, Ruy Blas by Victor Hugo, Fédora and La Tosca by Victorien Sardou, and L'Aiglon by Edmond Rostand. She also played male roles, including Shakespeare's Hamlet. Bernhardt elevated acting from a disreputable pastime into an art. A former courtesan, her performances were grandiose and beguiling. Audiences across Europe and the Americas paid to see her swoon, and she gave them their money’s worth. Bernhardt lived as grandly as she acted, the first to understand the importance of curating one’s public image. She created the persona of the exotic, eccentric celebrity: merchandizing herself through product endorsements and spreading rumors that she slept in a coffin to better understand the macabre roles she played.
Eleonora Duse was an Italian actress and was regarded as one of the greatest actresses of all time. A generation younger, Duse was Sarah Bernhardt’s opposite in nearly every way. Born to a penniless family of itinerant Italian troubadours, she had no formal training – only a desire to give voice to the poor, vulnerable women with whom she had grown up.
Playing to the Gods pulls back the curtain on the most tumultuous rivalry of the 19th century, on or off the stage. Bernhardt and Duse stole each other’s lovers, seduced one another’s favorite playwrights, and swore to outperform each other in their rival’s most iconic roles – culminating in a spectacular showdown in London in 1895 when they performed the same play across the street from one another in a head-to-head showcase of their radically different acting styles. A scandalous, breathless, and enormously entertaining history – full of high drama and low blows – Playing to the Gods is the must-read account of the feud that changed theater forever.
