Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1910 — ART OF ACTING. [ARTICLE]

ART OF ACTING.

Rome Opinions from the Great Ital- ' tan Actor, Toamuo Salvini. Just how far t£e stage is universal and, on the other hand, how far the expression of human emotion and passion is conditioned by race training and national life, is discussed by the famous Italian actor, Tommaso Salvini, in a long, analytical article which appears in a recent number of the Suddeutsche Monatschrifte of Munich, the New York Times says. No matter how highly educated an audience may be, says Sig. Salvlni, it will "only with difficulty be seized in Its innermost heart by a passion foreign to its mode of living.” In general, according to Sig. Salvini, French actors are true in the art of acting “only within a certain sphere; if that sphere is overstepped—i. e., if a certain passion becomes dramatic, serious and violent—they assume a declamatory manner which we Italians consider as being in bad taste. “Of course, I concede exceptions. As far as we are concerned, we are, while in general not especially clever and effective In comedy, more true in drama and tragedy. The Germans are ( much more diligent than the actors of the Latin people. They penetrate much more deeply into the parts they play, and execute them exactly, but they lack the fire and grace of representation." English men and women also, we are told, have the same excellent points and same faults. , "With them everything is form and accurateness in the representation of characters. They are extremely conscious and exact in their delivery, well versed in everything that concerns decorations and costumes, but there is hardly found among them a vivid Impulse, fire or spontaneity of artistic feeling. They have had great actors as, for example, Garrick, Macready, Kemble, Edmund Kean and, finally, Irving. Such artists, however, have been satisfied to obtain the applause of a public that spoke the same language and had the same tendency of mind an themselves.” The proper investigators and pioneers of dramatic art, the Italian star maintains, are the Italians and the Frenchmen. To them has been given the honor to have been appreciated and to have gained applause in the whole civilised world, and, while using

their own language, to have appeared toother with actors that spoke another idiom.