She was born to Vigevano, in a hotel room; she died to Pittsburgh, in a hotel room. It is the beginning and the end of the long journey, the long tour, around the world of Eleonora Duse, daughter of art.
But her art, the one built with the joy and toil of living, with the curiosity and anxiety to know, was destined to to endure over time and to become myth, perhaps because it was a cry or a song beautifully and tragically human (as the art of theater can sometimes be).
Eleonora Duse acted boldly around the world, in her own language, day after day, city after city, always attentive to the changes in writing and stage art.

The first loves, the sky of Naples, Asolo, the encounters with Gabriele D′Annunzio and Arrigo Boito, the letters scattered through the years and travels, the great affection for his daughter Enrichetta, and then the war, the love for Italy and its language, the victories, the loneliness, the disappointments, the revenge, the Paris of Sarah Bernhardt and gradually the palaces of Petersburg, the love for Beethoven, the "cruelty" of New York, the sun of San Francisco, the rain and chimneys of Pittsburgh, but always the will, in spite of everything, to travel, to know and experience, to return to his true love: theater.

That′s why, of course, "the last night to Pittsburgh" is relived in Ghigo de Chiara′s text in a feverish alternation of memories and dreams, with the echo of the texts and performances to she holds most dear, but above all with the comfort of words written throughout her life to her loved ones and to herself.
And it is also a way to pay tribute today, to 150 years since the Unification of Italy, to an extraordinary woman like Eleonora Duse and to what she meant and means for the spread of our culture and Italian Theater in the World.

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