Marta Abba

Marta Abba (June 25, 1900 in Milan, Italy – June 24, 1988 in Milan) was an Italian actress who had a relationship with the famous Italian Nobel Prize winner playwright Luigi Pirandello.

Marta Abba is most famous for her personal and artistic relationship with Luigi Pirandello. She was the sister of another actress, Cele Abba. After their meeting in 1923 and until his death in 1936, Marta Abba was the stimulus to Pirandello's creativity. She was an aspiring young 25 year old actress when she met the 58 year old acclaimed playwright, whose wife was confined to a mental asylum. From their correspondence it comes out how she not only inspired him but she also gave the ageing writer confidence in his work. Their relationship was complex but contributed much to the Italian theatre. Pirandello was obsessive in pursuit of what could be presumed to have remained an unconsummated affair. Marta was the true great actress for whom he had been waiting after his earlier bitter disappointment with Eleonora Duse. Luigi Pirandello's and Marta Abba's letters to each other have been published also in English. Marta Abba and Pirandello teamed up in 1925, and she appeared in many of his productions at theRome Arts Theater. In 1930, Abba founded her own theatrical company and specialized in staging the works of Pirandello and other European playwrights like George Bernard Shaw,Gabriele d'Annunzio and Carlo Goldoni under the direction of prestigious directors like Max Reinhardt and Guido Salvini.

Her Broadway theatre debut was in the play Tovarich at the Plymouth Theatre, (10/15/1936 - circa. 8/1937) in the role of Grand Duchess Tatiana Petrovna. Marta Abba's screen début in Broadway was in "Loyalty of Love", in 1937. In January 1938 she married a wealthy Cleveland polo player,[ Severance Allen Millikin] and settled down in Cleveland, Ohio until 1952, when she divorced and returned to Italy. The last years of her life she suffered from paresis and had to use a wheelchair. She died, at 87, from acerebral hemorrhage.

She published her autobiography in Italian, La mia vita di attrice.

Selected filmography

• Il caso Haller, directed by Alessandro Blasetti (1933)
• Teresa Confalonieri, directed by Guido Brignone (1934)

Selected plays

Some of the plays written by Luigi Pirandello in which Marta Abba acted:

• The New Colony (La Nuova Colonia)
• As You Desire Me (Come tu mi vuoi)
• Finding Oneself (Trovarsi)
• The Wives' Friend (L'Amica delle Moglie)
• Diana and Tuda (Diana e La Tuda)
• You Don't Know How (Non Si Sa Come)

Posted in: Italian actresses