The play is a biography of the great actress, dramatized by drawing on her letters and writings. At the center of the dramaturgy stands out above all the woman, courageous and unhappy, one of the greatest and most internationally recognized personalities of theater of all time, the protagonist of a stormy and tormented life, studded with successes and bitterness.

The actress is recounted without forgetting her difficult beginnings following her parents (also actors), up to her early successes, loves, fame, relationship with Arrigo Boito, passion for Gabriele d'Annunzio, international tours to the world's greatest theaters, in France, Britain, Russia, South America, the United States, retirement from the stage, her only silent film, World War I, triumphant return to the theater, and finally her dramatic epilogue.

The main action is placed temporally after World War I (in January 1921), when Eleonora Duse ponders returning to the theater, finding her savings wiped out by the inflation that hit Germany, which had emerged defeated and exhausted from the conflict. The stage action concludes with a chronological depiction of the last events after her return to the stage in '21, until her death in Pittsburgh in '24, during her last tour in America.

The play "La Duse (divine Eleonora)" is revived by teatrOrtaet with a new staging on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Eleonora Duse's death (1924-2024).