Rosina Filippi

Rosina Filippi (1866 – 1930) was an Italian-born English stage actress and acting instructor, known for adapting Jane Austen's work to the stage for the first time.

Life and career

Rosina Filippi was born in Venice, Italy. Her father, Filippo Filippi, was a music critic, and her mother, Vaneri Filippi, was a French singer who taught voice at the Milan Conservatoire. According to an obituary in The Times, she and her grandmother on her mother's side, Georgina Colmache, left France during the Paris Commune, when Filippi was five years old, and traveled to London.

Rosina Filippi had wanted to follow in her mother's footsteps and become an opera singer herself but, lacking sufficient vocal talent, pursued acting instead. She studied under Hermann Vezin and debuted at the Gaiety Theatre in 1883. Beerbohm Tree cast her in her first major role: the French maid in The Red Lamp. She became a well-known character actress, with roles including Madame Vinard in Trilby, Martha in Tree's Faust, and Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. George Bernard Shaw attempted to cast her in his play Caesar and Cleopatra as Cleopatra's nurse. She also led an acting school, emphasizing elocution, and directed the Oxford acting troupe the Christmas Dramatic Wanderers, alongside Dorothea Baird.

In 1895, J. M. Dent published Filippi's Duologues and Scenes From the Novels of Jane Austen. The book included seven selections of Austen's works: two from Pride and Prejudice, three from Emma, one from Sense and Sensibility, and one from Northanger Abbey. The selections focused primarily on Austen's women, with 12 female characters to four male, and downplayed the romantic aspects of Austen's works in favor of domestic scenes. They were adapted for two to three actors and intended for drawing room performance, and included eight illustrations demonstrating period-appropriate costumes. This was the first time Austen's works had been adapted for the stage; in her introduction, Filippi wrote: "I am convinced that Jane Austen as a playwright will fascinate her audiences as much as she has her readers as a novelist." The book was praised by most reviewers, though some questioned the viability of adapting Austen's works to the stage. It was widely re-released and anthologized, and led to several more Austen stage adaptations by other playwrights, which one reviewer suggested were spurred by "good-natured envy" of Filippi's work.