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ABBA , Marta

He was born in Milan on June 25, 1900 from Pompeo, a merchant, and from Giuseppina Trabucchi.

TRAINING AND BEGINNINGS

Born with the century, at the age of fourteen Abba showed up at the Accademia dei Filodrammatici in Milan, but, too young to be admitted, she had to wait a year before being able to access it (with a tear to the regulation that provided for the minimum age of sixteen years for registration). He attended it for three years, under the guidance of Ofelia Mazzoni and Enrico Reinach, graduating with honors and obtaining the Castiglioni prize. After the initial performances in drama companies, the influential playwright Sabatino Lopez was able to overcome the resistance of the family and wrote her at the Teatro del Popolo in Milan, chaired by him, where in 1923 he made his debut with the company directed by Ettore Paladini, alongside the famous actress Esperia Sperani. In his first steps in professional theater, Abba measured himself against an eclectic repertoire,boulevardiers , up to the brilliant French import comedies, much appreciated by the public of the time. In 1924 he joined the company of Virgilio Talli, head of the comedian counted among the forerunners of the theater of direction in Italy, for his skills in the concertation of the actors and the care of the staging. At the Manzoni Theater, where the company performed in the Gabbianoby Anton Čechov, Abba, in the role of Nina, was noted by Marco Praga, who, while not appreciating the work of the Russian playwright, praised her as a revelation of the evening: «There is a temper of actress in this young woman and, I add , as a primattress. His beautiful stage figure, his mask, his voice which is very sweet and at the same time the hottest, the intelligence he has shown in this protagonist part of the Czech drama, his safety and his ease, the they show that they were born for the stage, and immediately mature to face the great role "(see M. Praga, Cronache teatrali 1924 , Milano 1925, p. 103).

THE MEETING WITH PIRANDELLO

The first to accept the report was Luigi Pirandello, in his new role as chief cook, committed to creating the Teatro d'Arte in Rome, at Palazzo Odescalchi. His assistant, Guido Salvini, was sent to Milan, and despite the exorbitant financial demands for a young actress, the agreement was concluded and Abba was hired as the first actress with a pay of 170 lire a day (Lamberto Picasso, first actor of the company, in took 160).

The debut at the Teatro d'Arte in Rome took place on April 22, 1925 with a novelty by Massimo Bontempelli, Nostra Goddess, "modern comedy" in 4 acts which has as its protagonist a charming and fickle woman, whose singular peculiarity consists in changing personality depending on the dress she wears. The character allowed the actress to demonstrate the versatility of her talent, forged by the varied repertoire interpreted at the time of her Milanese apprenticeship, giving life, in the short span of the show, to a gallery of wide-ranging characters, from comedian to perfidious : "[...] we have known time to time" - wrote Silvio d'Amico, the most authoritative critic of the capital - "an abba monella, passive, sweet, dreamy, perfidious, accomplished, imploring, and so on. Essays, given the nature of the farce, of an external character, but, if not all original, all excellent; and which make us hope with all the more confidence in the revelation of the spirit of this new actress of ours "(S. d'Amico,Chronicles 1914/1955 , edited by A. d'Amico - L. Vito, introd. by G. Pedullà, Palermo 2002, p. 502).

Our Goddess, totaling 17 performances, was the most replicated show at the Art Theater, the only non-Pirandellian text to remain on the bill afterwards during the three years of the Company's life. According to Federico Vittore Nardelli, author of the only Pirandellian biography written when the writer was still alive: «Here, for Pirandello, it is life. If the statue moves, and moves with a woman's body, how do you want the artist not to tenderness, not to take it by the throat, that does not move him to the point of delirium? It is life for him. His days are filled with voices, looks, footsteps, laughter, tears. That's life. Here, this was, for Pirandello, Marta Abba: life "(FV Nardelli, The Secret Man. Life and crosses by Luigi Pirandello , Milan 1944 2, p. 277).

The arrival of Marta Abba disturbed the harmony at the Art Theater. As the ascendant exercised by the young actress over the master was growing, the mood of colleagues and collaborators increased: «In short» - recalls Virgilio Marchi, scenographer of Pirandello - «Abba became the center of attraction of the Company, the powerful instinct , the curiosity of the new interpreter, the attentions given to her by the Maestro, won over the general intelligence of her art companions, also dominating over the acute and cultured intelligence of that shrewd and profound actor who responds to the name of Picasso. […] The suggestive creature which embodied the life of the characters significantly distanced the Master from our confidence "(A. d'Amico - A. Tinterri, Pirandello chief cook , Palermo 1987, pp. 413 f.).

THE PIRANDELLIAN INTERPRETER

Arrived when the repertoire was for the most part already set, after the triumphant debut and the leading role in a controversial novelty by Italian author, Paulette by Eugenio Giovannetti, in the short Roman season at the Odescalchi Theater (April 2 - June 3, 1925) Abba he had to wait until May 18, the date of the first of the Six characters in search of an author, so that that encounter with the Pirandellian dramaturgy that would have conditioned his artistic career and his entire existence was accomplished. As the stepdaughter, the actress was praised by critics for her artistic maturity, characterized by a passionate adhesion to the character. Thus her transformation into Pirandellian interpreter was announced, a convinced follower of the teachings of the Master, zealous to the point of posting on the dressing room door, instead of her name of actress, the name of the character in turn, in order to underline her total cancellation in the part.

In the tour that followed, in London and Paris, Abba immediately had the opportunity to increase her gallery of Pirandellian interpretations, performing as Ersilia Drei in Dressing the Nudes , Mrs. Frola in So it is (if you like) and Agata Renni in The pleasure of honesty . In the 1926-27 season she was joined by her younger sister Celestina (Milan, 25 May 1923 - 1 January 1992), enrolled in the Pirandello company, in which she appeared first with the pseudonym of Tiziana Maloberti and then with various stage names (Cele , Tina).

From then on, with the ever more frequent appearance of Pirandellian dramaturgy in the repertoire of the Compagnia del Teatro d'Arte, Abba's progressive affirmation as Pirandellian interpreter tout court also underwent a decisive acceleration, until it became the inspiring muse of a part. significant of the dramatic production of Pirandello. From Diana and Tuda  (1927) to L'amica delle mogli (1927), to La nuova colonia (1928) it is a fact that during the three-year life of the Compagnia directed by him (1925-28) the new dramaturgical productions of Pirandello, all declined in the feminine, have the face of Marta Abba.

With Diana and Tuda Abba for the first time she found herself embodying a Pirandellian character written especially for her (until she reproduced her appearance, lyrically exalted in the first Bemporad edition of 1927: "She is very young and of wonderful beauty. Fawn, curly hair, green, long, large and shiny eyes that now become cloudy like lake water in passion; now, in serenity, they stop to look clear and sweet like a moonrise; now, in sadness, have the painful opacity of turquoise ", L. Pirandello, Maschere nude , III, edited by A. d'Amico, with the collaboration of A. Tinterri, Milan 2007, pp. 593 and 960), enjoying a success of esteem, to be shared with the author. Things got better withThe friend of the wives , whose protagonist conceived once again in the likeness of Abba, starting from the name of Marta Tolosani, is described by Pirandello as "beautiful: tawny; sea ​​eyes, liquid, full of light ». The sentiment grew to such an extent that, in 1926, in a holographic will, Pirandello appointed her heir for a sixth, in addition to leaving her the rights of the works written after their meeting (in the aftermath of the disappearance of the writer, a dispute arose with family members, which ended in 1962 with a sentence of the Court of Cassation which, on February 21, 1969, recognized to the Pirandello Heirs the right to include in the Opera omnia of the writer the theatrical texts owned by Marta Abba: The Italian Forum, December 1969, vol. XCII, coll. 3265-78).

The experience of the Compagnia di Pirandello ended on August 15, 1928 in Viareggio, but, in fact, it had already closed a few months earlier, with the première at the Teatro Argentina in Rome, on March 24, of La nuova colonia, a novelty that inaugurated the trilogy of Pirandellian "myths", in which the protagonist, La Spera, a prostitute redeemed from motherhood, was left alone on a rock with the creature in her arms, surviving the tsunami that overwhelms the island. Abba's interpretation gave the right to an attentive and sensitive critic like Alberto Cecchi for an unusually detailed criticism, which drew a severe, regretted balance of the three years the actress spent in the Company: «this actress of whom, all , at her appearance, we sang the praises, she stopped at her first character, that of Our Goddess by Massimo Bontempelli, which she played three years ago, at the Odescalchi theater. The first-rate qualities that it undoubtedly possessed are drowning in a now mechanical way, for which, the Abba says his parts with a hasty voice, eating his words, becoming unintelligible most of the time, and singing according to one of those cadences that are known in art under the name of birignao. The physical agility of which he shows continuously results in a kind of obstinate and unreasonable dance, which excites the nerves of the spectators. It is really sad to see a show like that of the decline of an actress in which great hopes had been put and that, precisely on these hopes signed in white, everyone continued to admire on purpose. On the other hand, it is now impossible to continue keeping your eyes closed and, if there is anything to save, the only way is perhaps to talk about it brutally, as we do to our pain. The fact is that on Saturday night, in the part of the Spera, which is beautiful, very human and very poetic, a quality actress would have found just enough to make the work even triumph, instead of disastrously leading it to the final contrasts "(seePirandello chief cook , cit., Pp. 279 s.).

CAPOCOMICA

Having dissolved the company, Pirandello retired into a sort of voluntary exile in Berlin, in the hope that the thriving German cinema could open up new fruitful prospects. Abba joined him and stayed in the German capital until March 1929, when, realizing that the master's film projects had no real possibility of being realized, he preferred to return to Italy. At the head of his own company, consecrated at first to a uniquely Pirandellian repertoire, on December 7, 1929 at the Turin Theater, he staged for the first time in Italy Lazzaro , according to Pirandello's "myth", which satisfied the public, but dissatisfied the audience. critical. On February 18, 1930 at the Filodrammatici in Milan he created another Pirandellian novelty,As you want me , in which she again played a character created for her, the Unknown, who made Alberto Cecchi exclaim: «What a strange actress! Two years ago it was in full decline, on a road that seemed to us to lead it without disaster to disaster. Last night, so alone, self-taught, without a manager, without a company that keeps her up, but only by dint of nerves, intelligence, momentum, passion, she seemed to us one of the greatest actresses we have "(cf. L Pirandello, Maschere nude , IV, edited by A. d'Amico, with the collaboration of A. Tinterri, Milan 2007, p. 407). The following year, however, Abba varied the repertoire to introduce a scenic transposition of the novel by Lev Tolstoj Anna Karenina. From 1931 his activity became more discontinuous and, after a long period of rest, he successfully recited in Paris in French Man, the beast and virtue . Returning to Italy, she performed in the Goldonian shrewd Widow , and then held on baptism at the Teatro dei Fiorentini in Naples, November 4, 1932, Finding herself , Pirandellian portrait of the torments of an actress, who risks losing her way beyond the labile border between reality and fiction. Success of esteem for the author, but full and warm consecration for the actress, welcomed at each stage of the tour , from Rome to Turin, by warm consensus.

In 1933 Abba seemed to have found a stable venue for his company at the theater of the Casino Municipale di San Remo, where on November 7 of that year the first Italian performance of the Pirandellian When someone is was held . The call to life for the old poet, who wants to escape fame to find a second youth in love, has the name Veroccia and, once again, the face of Marta Abba. However, the illusion of being able to renew the dream of a company with a permanent headquarters in the theater of the coastal city did not last long.

CINEMA: A SHORT STORY

Between 1933 and 1934 his attempt to open a path in the cinema was consummated: «A tenacious, even humble struggle - returned to Italy underwent auditions of voice, make-up, photogenic - destined to continuous, disappointing defeats. Starting with Acciaio , directed by Walter Ruttmann and inspired by a subject signed by Pirandello who was unable to impose it against Isa Pola. Thanks to Mussolini's recommendation, she will be the female protagonist of a film with little commitment The Haller case , a remake of a German crime novel "(LF d'Amico,  The man of contradictions. Pirandello seen up close , Palermo, 2007, pp. 128 s.). In the Haller case (1933), a remake of Der Andere(1931) by Robert Wiene directed by Alessandro Blasetti, Abba (in the role of the prostitute) starred alongside Memo Benassi (Haller) and Camillo Pilotto (the leader of the gang). Filippo Sacchi, the most important film critic of the time, wrote of his interpretation «The main interest of the film is given by the presence of Marta Abba, who for the first time shows herself on the screen. His very personal art and his powerful mask manage to have reason for the false atmosphere of the drama, that débauche of manner, that stretched conflict, and to give soul and meaning to its part "( Corriere della Sera , February 14, 1934). We find it, next to Nerio Bernardi (Federico Confalonieri), in Teresa Confalonieri (1934), Risorgimento film by Guido Brignone winner of the Mussolini cup at the Venice Film Festival for best Italian film. Filippo Sacchi wrote again of Abba's interpretation as Countess Confalonieri: «Marta Abba has given this character all the warmest and most beautiful accents of her sagacious and very personal art. It is a complete interpretation of balance, firmness and at the same time intimate fire, agitated emotion. Even from the cinematographic aspect, some of his gestures of slow despair, certain 'close-ups' radiating dreamy fervor, are photogenic perfect "(Corriere della Sera, 27 October 1934).

FAREWELL TO THE SCENES

In October 1934 it was Mila di Codro next to Ruggero Ruggeri, who returned to play the role of Aligi in a special edition of D'Annunzio's Daughter of Iorio with the direction of Pirandello and the scenes of Giorgio de Chirico, representation offered to the international audience defendant in Rome for the Volta on theater conference, organized under the aegis of the Academy of Italy. In July he was Porzia in the Merchant of Venice directed by Max Reinhardt (Venice Film Festival, Campo San Trovaso). And in December of the same year in Paris, she, who had recited Man, the beast and virtue in French, was the only Italian to parade in stage costume together with all the French interpreters, who over time had dressed Pirandellian clothes, on a celebratory evening dedicated to Pirandello, just awarded the Nobel Prize. Pirandello, for his part, had always advised her to study languages ​​and, after a few months spent in London to learn English, in April 1936 Abba accepted the offer of an American impresario to act on Broadway Tovarich, a comedy by Jacques Deval (in the adaptation of Robert E. Sherwood), whose protagonist, a Russian aristocrat who escaped the revolution and took refuge in Paris, where to live is forced to be a maid, was the ideal part to justify her imperfect pronunciation. After a break-in period in Brighton and around London, he embarked for the United States on September 17 and, after a few performances in Philadelphia and Baltimore, on October 5 he could finally make his debut at the Plymouth Theater on Broadway. Here she was reached by the news of Pirandello's death, which occurred on December 10 of that year, consumed in a few days by pneumonia.

The last letter of the writer addressed to her is dated December 4 and ended as follows: «If I think of the distance, I immediately feel I fall into my atrocious solitude, as in an abyss of despair. But don't think about it! I hug you tightly with everything, all my heart. Your Master »(L. Pirandello, Letters to Marta Abba, edited by B. Ortolani, Milan 1995, p. 1392). Regarding the large correspondence between Pirandello and Abba, Pietro Frassica observes: «There is therefore a sort of functional leap between the two letters, not given by the obvious difference in literary quality, but by the presence of two different 'speeches', the one passionate and 'useless', the other plan is entirely informative, perfectly deaf to the desperate appeals, implicit or explicit, of the revered interlocutor "(M. Abba, Dear Maestro ... Letters to Luigi Pirandello (1926-1936) , Milan 1994, p. 10).

When leaving for the American tour , Abba entrusted to the fortnightly magazine of Lucio Ridenti Il dramma an autobiographical memory, proud and resentful, entitled Marta Abba. My life as an actress (see Drama, XII [1936], resp. nn. 237, July 1st, pp. 2-5; 238, July 15, pp. 2-5; 239, August 1, pp. 2-5), which ended with a denunciation of the precarious conditions of Italian theater and which, in retrospect, sounds like a farewell to an ungrateful Italy, stingy with those awards, which would have come to it from the United States. In July 1937 she was awarded the third prize of the American dramatic league and on January 28, 1938 she married Cleveland (OH) Severance A. Millikin, the grandson of a steel tycoon, effectively retiring from the scene. After the divorce, which occurred in 1952, and the consequent return to Italy, Abba formed a short-lived company with the actor Piero Carnabuci, still made some sporadic reappearance on the stage, to finally finally retire and isolate himself in his villa near from Aulla, baptized by her to find herself. In recent years, affected by paresis, she lived in San Pellegrino Terme. Marta Abba died in Milan, in the Santa Rita clinic, on June 14, 1988.

The voice Abba , with which Leonardo Sciascia 's Pirandellian Alphabet opens , ends with a sort of epitaph: "Creature, character, actress of inalienable Pirandellian condition: like all the lives of those who with Pirandello' s life have had to do. Lives of victims of which Pirandello was a victim ».

SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

In addition to La mia vita di actress , and the correspondence in the editions mentioned above (for which reference is made to L. Pirandello, Letters to Marta Abba , cit., And to M. Abba, Dear Master ... Letters to Luigi Pirandello (1926-1936) , edited by P. Frassica, cit.), among the writings of Marta Abba it is worth mentioning Ten years of theater with Luigi Pirandello (in Il dramma , XLII [1966], n. 362-363, November-December, pp. 45-58), the first glimpse of the copious Pirandellian correspondence which, preserved at the University of Princeton (NJ) and published almost entirely in the edition of the works which appeared in the Meridians Mondadori allows us to better understand the complex intertwining of psychological and artistic motivations that linked Pirandello and Abba.

Among the items dedicated to her in encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries are those contained in contemporary publications such as Enc. biographical and bibliogr. «Italian» ; N. Leonelli, tragic actors comic actors , Milan 1940, I, pp. 14-18; M. Corsi, Who is on stage? , Milan 1946, pp. 25-30 (with significant title: An exile: MA ); the lemma present in the Encyclopaedia of the Show is still valid, I, Rome 1954, coll. 4-6 (A. Fiocco); the entry prepared by KL Angioletti for the multimedia archive of Italian actors (AMAt.I.), project of the theatrical database of the University of Florence (http.//www.fupress.com) is analytical and extensive; short, like her film career, but detailed, the voice dedicated to her in the Filmlexicon , Rome 1958, ad vocem (EG Laura). Finally, see MA (1900-1988) , in Italiane , II, From the First World War to the Second World War , edited by E. Roccella - L. Scaraffia, Rome 2004, pp. 3-6 (F. Merlo).

Of the vast Pirandellian bibliography, in which A. occupies a prominent place, we limit ourselves to selecting the biography of FV Nardelli cit. (Milan 1932, 1944 2 ), published when the writer was still alive, and the ponderous Pirandello by G. Giudice (Turin 1975), which appeared in the prestigious series The social life of the new Italy . Limited to the three-year period 1925-28, central to the relationship between Pirandello and Abba, please refer to A. d'Amico - A. Tinterri, Pirandello chief cook , cit .; Abba speaks widely about Luigi Filippo d'Amico, film director and husband of Lietta (daughter of Lietta Pirandello and Manuel Aguirre), in his The man of contradictions. Pirandello seen up close, Palermo 2007. Finally, the reference to the informed News , contained in the third and fourth volume of Luigi Pirandello, Nude masks , edited by A. d'Amico, with the collaboration of A Tinterri, Milan 2004 and 2007, is a must.