Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Playing to the Gods: Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, and the Rivalry that Changed Acting Forever
    Playing to the Gods: Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, and the Rivalry that Changed Acting Forever
    Playing to the Gods: Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, and the Rivalry that Changed Acting Forever
    Audiobook9 hours

    Playing to the Gods: Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, and the Rivalry that Changed Acting Forever

    Written by Peter Rader

    Narrated by Amanda Carlin

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    The riveting story of the rivalry between the two most renowned actresses of the nineteenth 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.

    Audiences across Europe and the Americas clamored to see the divine Sarah Bernhardt swoon—and she gave them their money’s worth. The world’s first superstar, she traveled with a chimpanzee named Darwin and a pet alligator that drank champagne, shamelessly supplementing her income by endorsing everything from aperitifs to beef bouillon, and spreading rumors that she slept in a coffin to better understand the macabre heroines she played.

    Eleonora Duse shied away from the spotlight. Born to a penniless family of itinerant troubadours, she disappeared into the characters she portrayed—channeling their spirits, she claimed. Her new, empathetic style of acting revolutionized the theater—and earned her the ire of Sarah Bernhardt in what would become the most tumultuous theatrical showdown of the nineteenth century. Bernhardt and Duse seduced each other’s lovers, stole one another’s favorite playwrights, and took to the world’s stages to outperform their rival in her most iconic roles.

    A scandalous, enormously entertaining history full of high drama and low blows, Playing to the Gods is the perfect “book for all of us who binge-watched Feud” (Daniel de Visé, author of Andy & Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateAug 21, 2018
    ISBN9781508261407
    Author

    Peter Rader

    Peter Rader is a writer, director, producer, cinematographer, and editor who has worked for Hollywood’s leading film and television studios over a career spanning three decades. The author of Playing to the Gods and Mike Wallace: A Life, he has mentored writers and taught classes and workshops at the Los Angeles Film School, the California State University system, and Harvard University. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two sons.

    Related to Playing to the Gods

    Related audiobooks

    Entertainers and the Rich & Famous For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Cathedrals Made of Bricks

      Nov 25, 2019

      Cathedrals Made of Bricks
      6 min read

    • Article

      Mfa Or The Highway?

      Dec 25, 2019

      FOR YEARS, I IDENTIFIED AS A PLAY ‑ wright who wanted an MFA. I had seen those coveted three letters in almost every playwright’s bio, often attached to an illustrious university—an Ivy, or maybe a West Coast equivalent. I spent three autumns writing

      12 min read

    • Article

      Small Is Beautiful

      Sep 25, 2019

      Small Is Beautiful
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Nevers season 1 part 1

      Jul 23, 2021

      The Nevers season 1 part 1
      1 min read

    • Article

      Samuel D. Hunter The High Tragedy Place

      Apr 27, 2020

      In Samuel D. Hunter’s Greater Clements, Maggie and Joe, a mother and son who run an Idaho mining museum, face its imminent closure as their small town goes through the process of unincorporating. When an old flame of Maggie’s turns up, her chance for

      8 min read

    • Article

      Acclaim and Alcoholism

      Feb 25, 2019

      A PLAYER AND A GENTLEMAN: THE DIARY OF HARRY WATKINS, NINETEENTH-CENTURY U.S. AMERICAN ACTOR Edited by Amy E. Hughes and Naomi J. Stubbs. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Mich., 2018. 352 pp., $80 cloth, $64.95 ebook. PLAYING TO THE GODS: SAR

      7 min read

    • Article

      Gyles Brandreth

      Feb 24, 2021

      Gyles Brandreth
      1 min read

    • Article

      Robert Thicknesse on Opera

      Jul 27, 2023

      YOU KNOW THE OLD JOKE — why does everyone hate X (say, Geoff Boycott or Hillary Clinton) on sight? Answer: “It saves time.” Over the years film has happily performed this service for opera, such masterpieces as Pretty Woman and Godfather 3 exposing i

      3 min read

    • Article

      Spring To Life

      Mar 30, 2023

      ● EVEN BY THE OLYMPIAN standards of the Covent Garden stalls, it was a top effort: the old dude beside me was snoring happily within five minutes of curtain-up on Rusalka. Actually at 200 quid a pop it’s not such a bad deal: for a start, you miss the

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Week In Theatre: The Walk; Wuthering Heights – Review

      Oct 31, 2021

      In Arabic, Amal means “hope”. And hope is embodied in each step of The Walk, the journey across Europe, begun in July, made by the three-and-a-half metre-tall puppet called Little Amal. By the time she arrives in Manchester on 3 November, she will ha

      3 min read

    • Article

      Theatre

      Jan 11, 2023

      Theatre
      2 min read

    • Article

      A One-woman Show

      Dec 1, 2021

      A One-woman Show
      4 min read

    • Article

      Thunder In Her Head

      Dec 1, 2023

      Call it 1941. A choreographer, nearing 50, and a small band of women and men appear onstage in costumes that some of the dancers themselves have sewn, using remnants of silk and cloth from the counters of Orchard Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side

      4 min read

    • Article

      From Russia, With Love

      Sep 14, 2022

      From Russia, With Love
      5 min read

    • Article

      The New Normal

      Oct 4, 2023

      The New Normal
      6 min read

    • Article

      Robert Thicknesse on Opera

      Apr 27, 2023

      I WAS AS EXCITED AS everyone else to learn that opera actually exists in New Zealand — two things surely linked before only by their joint gold for the world’s least fashionable phenomena. Not only that, but it turns out that Kiwis have a thriving ne

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Playing to the Gods

    4/5

    10 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Fascinating and well paced dual biography of Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse. I learned so much about both of them, about the development of acting, and about early cults of celebrity. I have talked more about this book with random friends than most things I can remember reading over the last couple of years -- both because I didn't know Eleanora Duse existed, despite my theater background, and because I didn't realize how much styles of acting have changed over time. The book itself is well balanced, fairly exhaustive, and very carefully centered on their rivalry, which I think works well when you are covering two such large and documented personalities.

      Advanced reader's copy provided by Edelweiss.