Word: pirandello
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...repertoire opened with L'Aiglon, written by Edmond Rostand for Bernhardt. Following the example of that great actress, Mme. Simone plays the leading male rôle, that of Napoleon's son. She will follow with Naked, a play by Pirandello, new to America. For the third week, the play will be Mme. Sans-Gêne Classics will complete the repertoire...
...Living Mask. Another Pirandello play has come to baffle wit and start psychopathic conversation. The play was originally named Henry IV, because the hero?an embittered contemporary Italian?is discovered at a masquerade carnival in the guise of Emperor Henry IV (the one who went to Canossa barefoot in the snow to ask the Pope's pardon). The masquerading Italian is pitched off his horse onto a stone, and when he wakes up believes himself to be the actual Henry...
...Luigi Pirandello is a short, slight, active Italian gentleman of some 56 years, with a gray beard and bright brown eyes. He has come to America to witness the performance of a cycle of his plays,* soon to be presented in Manhattan. He has had a remarkably active literary life. After his early studies he became a teacher, an occupation which he has followed at intervals ever since. His output has been stupendous, including six volumes of verse, 365 short stories, novels and 22 plays of varying character. At the root of all his work is a scornful...
...Signer Pirandello speaks no English. He speaks in rapid melodious Italian, with few gestures of hands but with great facial mobility. When I heard him he was discussing two kinds of art?that of persons and that of things. There is the contemplative artist, he says, who withdraws from the world and finally becomes lost in the secure observation of his own mentality. There is the artist who is stimulated by action, the sort of action that Mussolini now represents in Italy, whose interest is in people rather than in the mind...
This career of Pirandello's is an extraordinary one. He did not begin writing plays until he was 50 years of age and he was not really famous until he began writing plays. When you consider that three or four of our most brilliant American dramatists have ceased writing plays at an even earlier age than 50, there seems a good lesson in the activities of Pirandello. Why shouldn't a man keep his creative vitality until he reaches that period in which ihe can look at life with amused toler- ance, in which he is capable of interpreting life...