Margherita "Rita" Sacchetto (15 January 1880 – 18 January 1959) was a German dancer, film actress, and screenwriter.

Early life

Margherita Sacchetto was born in

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

, in what was then the German Empire, on 15 January 1880. Her father was from

Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...

, and her mother was Austrian. She trained as a dancer in Munich.Emily M. Burbank
"Rita Sacchetto"
''Putnam's Magazine'' (November 1909): 186–191.

Career

left, Rita Sacchetto 1911 – Lino Selvatico RitaSacchetto1909a

Sacchetto made her debut in 1905 at the Munich Künstlerhaus.

Gustav Klimt Gustav Klimt (14 July 1862 – 6 February 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and a founding member of the Vienna Secession movement. His work helped define the Art Nouveau style in Europe. Klimt is known for his paintings, murals, sket ...

and

Koloman Moser Koloman Moser (; 30 March 1868 – 18 October 1918) was an Austrian artist who exerted considerable influence on twentieth-century graphic art. He was one of the foremost artists of the Vienna Secession movement and a co-founder of Wiener Werk ...

designed the sets for her performance in 1906. She toured internationally from 1908 to 1910 with dancer

Loie Fuller Loie Fuller (; born Marie Louise Fuller; January 15, 1862 – January 1, 1928), also known as Louie Fuller and Loïe Fuller, was an American dancer and a pioneer of modern dance and theatrical lighting techniques. Auguste Rodin said of her, "Lo ...

, including a show at the

Metropolitan Opera The Metropolitan Opera is an American opera company based in New York City, currently resident at the Metropolitan Opera House (Lincoln Center), Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, situated on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Referred ...

in 1910, and a dance about women's suffrage set to the music of

Edvard Grieg Edvard Hagerup Grieg ( , ; 15 June 18434 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is widely considered one of the leading Romantic music, Romantic era composers, and his music is part of the standard classical repertoire worldwid ...

, performed at the New Theatre, also in 1910. She also ran a dance school in Berlin from 1916 to 1918, with students including

Rahel Sanzara Rahel Sanzara (also Sansara; pseudonym for Johanna Bleschke) (9 February 1894 – 8 February 1936) was a German dancer, actress and novelist. Biography Johanna Bleschke was the oldest of a town musician's four children. After graduating from a ...

Anita Berber Anita Berber (10 June 1899 – 10 November 1928) was a German dancer, actress, and writer who was the subject of an Otto Dix painting. She lived during the time of the Weimar Republic. Early life Berber was born in Leipzig to the violinist Feli ...

, Hansi Burg, and

Valeska Gert Valeska Gert (11 January 1892 – c. 16 March 1978) was a German dancer, pantomime, cabaret artist, actress and pioneering performance artist. Early life and career Gert was born as Gertrud Valesca Samosch in Berlin to a Jewish family. She was the ...

. Among her neighbors in Berlin was the scientist,

Max Born Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German-British theoretical physicist who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics, and supervised the work of a ...

, who recalled her as "a very beautiful woman" with "dazzling" students. She was known for developing a style called ''tanzbilder'', which involved novel dance interpretations of great works of art, with remarkable costumes designed by Sacchetto herself.

Caroline V. Kerr Caroline V. Kerr was an American journalist and translator who in the latter years of her life lived in Berlin, where she died on November 11, 1927. She is perhaps best known as the translator into English of the correspondence between Richard Wag ...

of ''Theatre'' magazine described Sacchetto in 1909 as "wholly human, of fascinating naiveté, captivating in her exuberance of temperament, in her grace and charm.""Rita Sacchetto: Munich's Famous Dancer"
''The Theatre'' (December 1909): 172–173. Ben Ali Haggin painted Sacchetto's portrait in one of her best-known costumes, titled "En Crinoline". At the peak of her dance career, she was a frequent guest of European royalty, including Queen

Margherita of Savoy Margherita of Savoy (''Margherita Maria Teresa Giovanna''; 20 November 1851 – 4 January 1926) was List of Italian royal consorts, Queen of Italy by marriage to her first cousin King Umberto I of Italy. She was the daughter of Prince Ferdinand ...

Nicholas II of Russia Nicholas II (Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov; 186817 July 1918) or Nikolai II was the last reigning Emperor of Russia, Congress Poland, King of Congress Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland from 1 November 1894 until Abdication of Nicholas II, hi ...

's family, and

Alfonso XIII of Spain Alfonso XIII ( Spanish: ''Alfonso León Fernando María Jaime Isidro Pascual Antonio de Borbón y Habsburgo-Lorena''; French: ''Alphonse Léon Ferdinand Marie Jacques Isidore Pascal Antoine de Bourbon''; 17 May 1886 – 28 February 1941), also ...

. She appeared in several Danish and German silent films, under contract to

Nordisk Film Nordisk Film A/S () is a Danish entertainment company involved in film production and distribution and a subsidiary of Egmont Group. The multimedia entertainment company is also involved in television production, cinemas, computer games and ...

, between 1913 and 1917.Mary Simonson
"Dance Pictures: The Cinematic Experiments of Anna Pavlova and Rita Sacchetto"
''Screening the Past'' (August 2015). In the United States, she was known for her appearance in ''The Ghost of the White Lady'' (1914), and ''In the Line of Duty'' (1914). She wrote one film, ''En Død i Skønhed'' (1915), in which she also appeared. In 1924, Sacchetto was accidentally shot in the foot by one of her husband's friends. This resulted in her retiring to Poland.

Personal life

At age 37, Rita Sacchetto married the 24-year-old Polish nobleman and sculptor

August Zamoyski Count August Zamoyski (28 June 1893 – 19 May 1970) was a Polish sculptor, member of groups Bunt and Formiści. Zamoyski was an author of stone compositions in simplified and geometrised form. His first works were influenced by French cubism ...

on 5 May 1917, becoming the first of his four wives.Piotr Szubert
"August Zamoyski"

Culture.pl Culture.pl is a large Polish multilingual project and web portal devoted to Polish culture. It was founded by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in March 2001. The project promotes the work of Polish artists around the world and is a popular informati ...

. Sacchetto died in 1959, in Nervi, Italy, three days after her 79th birthday.

References

External links

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Rita Sacchetto's listing on BFI
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sacchetto, Rita 1880 births 1959 deaths 20th-century German dancers German film actresses 20th-century German actresses Actresses from Munich