Marta Abba

Personal

Vocation

Italian actress, the sister of another actress, Cele Abba (25 May 1906 - 1 January 1992). After their meeting in 1925 and until his death in 1936, Marta Abba was the stimulus to the playwright Luigi Pirandello's creativity. She was an aspiring 25-year-old actress when she met the 58-year-old playwright, whose wife had been confined to a mental asylum in 1919. From their correspondence it comes out how she not only inspired him but she also gave the 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. In 1928, 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. 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 a cerebral hemorrhage. Link to Wikipedia biography