Just before dedicating himself to the creation of the television miniseries "Jesus of Nazareth", Zeffirelli accepted the challenge of staging the almost forgotten tragedy by d'Annunzio. The lead role was played by Sarah Ferrati, with whom Zeffirelli had collaborated with great success on the Italian productions of Edward Albee's plays "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "A Delicate Balance"; in a secondary role, Franca Mazzoni, alongside whom Zeffirelli had taken his first steps as an actor in post-war Florence. Around them, Zeffirelli designed particularly beautiful and evocative sets and created a production that was very respectful of the text, although in an effort to make it more accessible to the audience, he made many cuts, reducing the original five acts to three.
The warm success is evidenced by the extensive tour, documented by a vast press review preserved in the Archive, from which it is clear that the effectiveness of the production was not enough to silence the nearly unanimous criticism directed at the text.