10The Influence of Giovanni Grasso on Meyerhold’s Works, Theories, and Biography1
Three Levels of Influence
‘I consider Grasso the greatest actor in Europe, and admire his performances entirely’ (Craig 1909: 98). These are the words that one of the most exacting observers of the early twentieth century, Edward Gordon Craig, used to exalt the talent of the Sicilian actor Giovanni Grasso (1873–1930). The admiration expressed for this interpreter by many of the greatest masters, endowed with an overwhelming personality and an acrobatic technique, is still astonishing. Craig was not an isolated case: Lee Strasberg accorded Grasso some of the most beautiful pages of his A Dream of Passion (1987: 23–4); ...
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