Adelaide Ristori

Adelaide Ristori (29 January 18229 October 1906) was a distinguished Italian tragedienne, who was often referred to as the Marquise.

Biography She was born in Cividale del Friuli, the daughter of strolling players, and appeared as a child on the stage. At age fourteen, she made her first success as Francesca da Rimini in Silvio Pellico's tragedy of the same name. At eighteen she was playing Mary Stuart in an Italian version of Friedrich Schiller's play of the same name. She had been a member of the Sardinian company and also of the Ducal company at Parma for some years before her marriage to Giuliano Capranica, marchese del Grillo, in 1846. After a short retirement from her career, she returned to the stage and played regularly in Turin and the provinces.

It was not until 1855 that she paid her first professional visit to Paris, where the part of Francesca was chosen for her début. In this she was rather coldly received, but she took Paris by storm in the title role of Alfieri's Myrrha. Furious partisanship was aroused by the appearance of a rival to the great Rachel. Paris was divided into two camps of opinion. Humble playgoers fought at gallery doors over the merits of their respective favourites. The two famous women never actually met, but the French actress seems to have been convinced that Ristori had no ill feelings towards her, only admiration and respect.

Adelaide Ristori in costume as Marie Antoinette, a role she played starting in 1867, ca. 1867-1885; from the Cabinet Card Collection of the Boston Public Library In 1875, after one of the United States visits, she toured to Australia, performing the roles of Medea, Mary Stuart, and the title role in Elizabeth, Queen of England, written especially for her by Paolo Giacometti. Ristori's niece Giulia Tessero and the latter's husband, Eduardo Majeroni, joined Ristori's world tour, later settling in Australia and working as actors and theatre managers.

Of her 1878 tour to Spain, Ristori said, "[It] was not a great pleasure to me, because I already knew the country; and also, with the exception of Madrid and Barcelona, which are still flourishing, I found all the towns much changed in every way, politically and otherwise, for the worse", but a tour to Scandinavia the following year, "on the contrary, was a great delight to me—the seeing [of] entirely new and charming countries, and the making [of] acquaintances with a most enthusiastic public, who lauded me to the seventh heaven!"

Eleanor Marx wrote to her sister Jenny telling her that she was to see Ristori perform Lady Macbeth “for the first time in English” in London on 4 July 1882.

In Victoria, Australia, a company working several gold mines on the rich Berry Lead near Allendale was named Ristori after her, which led to a part of Allendale being known as Ristori town:"...the villages of Allendale (with its suburbs, Ristori Town and Broomfield)...the Ristori group owed their names to the original Adelaide Ristori, the Italian actress."

She retired from professional life in 1885, and died on 9 October 1906 in Rome. She left a son, the marchese Giorgio Capranica del Grillo, and a daughter, Bianca Capranica (aka Bianca Ristori)