HOW MADAME RISTORI BECAME AN AOTRESS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1679, 29 December 1887, Page 4

HOW MADAME RISTORI BECAME AN AOTRESS.

The memoirs of Adilaide Ristori, the Italian Sarah Bernhardt, are just about to be published at Milan and Pari?. The great tragic actress begins by telling of Ler introduction on the stage. "My parents," Bhe says, "were honeßt people, but very middling comedians. They thought it only natural to introduces me to their 'art,' and I was not yet threo months old when I made my debtit. They were playing a little piece in which a grandfather was to be reconciled to his daughter by the sight of her infant child. I was pub into a basket filled with flowers and carried on the stage, but I am sorry to say that I howled so dreadfully that I had to be taken back to my mother. Next day I was replaced by a splendid baby doll, which performed the part far better than I had done.. I appeared for the second time on the boards at the age of three, when I was the daughter of a Orusuder's widow. It appears that even then I had not grasped the art of acting, for when a hostile eavalier was trying to carry me off I took hold of his red wig and scratched his face in great fury. When he made a second attempt at getting hold pf me I rushed towards the back of the stage, and, notwithstanding the efforts of the pages, I disappeared, shouting ' Mamma, mamma!' At the age of four and a half I was made to play a small part in a little vaudeville, and I may say without exaggeration that I had an enormous success. I remember that every time when the manager announced, according to custom, that ' the little Ristorj' would appear in a play, he was wildly applauled. When I was ten years old I played servants' parts ; at 12 I was engaged for children's parts, or even, as I was very developed for my ago, the parts of a youog premiere. With fourteen years I became a tragic actress; I played Franc(!sea in "Francesca da Rimini," by Silvio Pellico. It was at Novara, and (he director wished to engage me for the chief part but my father refused, signing instead *n engagement fcr the theatre of the King of S»rdini;i. The Royal company which played all the winter at Turin was uudw the direction of Gaolano Razzi. Among its members wore Vestri, Kighetti, Marchioni, Romagnoli, all artists who are we!l known in Italr, I played a promi? ©nt parts, and at the end of a year I was entrusted with the parts of sentimental premiere. Three years later, in 1810, 1 signed an engagement for five yeir«. I vvhh ihe heroine. And this is how I became * tragic actress." —Pall Mall Q .setae