After the London season, the play was taken to the 20th Festival Internazionale del Teatro di Prosa in Venice. Starting with the autumn tour of the Old Vic (with a documented stop in Liverpool on October 9, 1961), Joanna Dunham replaced Judi Dench. The tour then moved to the United States, starting at New York's City Center on February 13, 1962. Between February and June, it visited 12 cities, including Washington, Philadelphia, Rochester, Detroit, East Lansing, Kansas City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, and Seattle. Upon returning to Europe, during the summer, the play was staged in Berlin, Dubrovnik, Cairo, and Athens.
In 1960, Zeffirelli had gained international fame as an opera director but had very little experience as a director of drama. He was therefore surprised to receive, as an Italian director, the invitation to stage "Romeo and Juliet", the masterpiece of English literature, at the Old Vic Theatre in London, a historic venue and custodian of the Shakespearean tradition. The director of the company convinced him by saying that he felt the need to infuse the drama with Italian-ness, sun, and passion. Later, Zeffirelli wrote: "I have always thought that all cultures have recognized Shakespeare as the greatest poet and dramatist in history, thanks to translations into even the most remote languages; this shows that his dramatic genius goes far beyond his talent as a poet of the English language. I also thought that in his time, the role of Juliet was played by a fourteen-year-old boy, and it was hard for someone of that age to properly tackle the author’s verses. I understood that the right path was not so much to perform Shakespeare’s wonderful poetry well, but to seek the dramatic substance of his characters."
The protagonists were John Stride and Judi Dench, and the public's response was enormous, with even the most demanding critics expressing enthusiasm. It can be said that "Romeo and Juliet" marked Zeffirelli's international professional accolade.