Eduardo Majeroni
Eduardo Majeroni[a] (1840 – 20 October 1891) was an actor who toured the world with Adelaide Ristori, playing popular Italian dramas in their original language.
Majeroni however put more effort into the college's theatrical endeavors than course work, and when Count Cavour enlisted Napoleon III's aid to drive out the Austrians in 1859, he and his comrade Alexander Meschini abandoned study for the glamour of an artillery uniform.
They saw little fighting; after the siege of Bologna,[b] which lasted five days before the Austrians capitulated, their capture of succeeding towns resembled nothing so much as a triumphal march, and arrived too late to assist the French at Magenta.
[1] With the hateful Armistice of Villafranca signed, Majeroni and Meschini despondently returned to Milan, where they fell in with a crowd of aspiring actors, and was engaged as "utility man" — bit player, stagehand, and poster writer — by an impresario named Pilati, for little reward as it turned out when he left in April 1860.
In late 1864 he left Alexandria for Naples, where his eldest brother, the famous[3] Achille Majeroni, had formed a company and leased the Teatro Mercadante for a series of plays.
By teaming up with three other volunteers to safeguard each others' interests he survived the war without injury, and was awarded a Medaglia al valor militare for planting il Tricolore at Fort Ampola while under fire.
[5] The company returned to Europe by the RMS China on 5 December 1875,[6] but without Majeroni, who was determined to stay, at least partly to learn the language, as urged by Mapleson.
His next appearance in Australia was under contract to Samuel Lazar, in The Old Corporal, translated from a French play,[c] staged at Sydney's Theatre Royal commencing 24 April 1876, and was rapturously received.
They returned to the Melbourne stage in March, this time at the Academy of Music, with a new play, A Living Statue,[18] again translated from the Italian La Statua di Carne of Teobaldo Cicconi, by François Morel.
Their final shows in Melbourne consisted of the Ristori favorite Queen Elizabeth, by Giacometti, with the vaudevillean Nephews and Nieces on the same bill, closing on 7 April 1877.
He rejoined his wife briefly, but the northern winter brought on a fresh relapse and he returned to Sydney in August 1882 as manager for American comedian Joseph B.
[30] In 1884 they joined forces with W. J. Wilson, who was managing the Sydney Opera House (no connection to today's famous building on Bennelong Point), where they put on Camille and Marie Antoinette, both written expressly for Ristori by Paolo Giacometti.
[34] On 6 May 1891 Majeroni was tendered a "monster benefit" at Her Majesty's Theatre,[35] but he had become a recluse, and wasted away, dying from consumption at his home, 156 Victoria Street, and his remains were buried at the Waverley Cemetery.
Back when the Majeronis were at the peak of their popularity in Australia, the Signora related to an interviewer how she came from a dramatic family.We Italians learn as children to speak with our bodies and our eyes.
So much so that at rehearsal my companions are accustomed to read a response to what they are saying in my face, and if, to save myself for the evening's work, I adopt English immobility of expression, they stop short, bewildered, although they never expect the same facial answer from those of their own race.
"She remembered how, as the young wife of her aunt's "leading man", she joined the company in order to travel with her husband, taking tiny parts such as Marie Lambrun in Queen Elizabeth, and by "speaking with her face" getting favorable reviews.
They were both in the plenitude of their powers, handsome in person, emotional by nature, full of intelligence, with a keen insight into character, picturesque in style, vivid in dramatic portraiture, and animated by an enthusiastic love of their art.
