Schino's volume offers a summation and distillation of previous studies on the great Italian stage actress Eleonora Duse (1858–1924) and a new interpretation of her as an artist whose innovativeness is comparable to that of Luigi Pirandello. Pioneering feminist work by Laura Mariani and Donatella Orecchia, along with more traditional scholarship, constitutes the background of this study. Schino bases her approach on the teachings of Eugenio Barba's School of Theatre Anthropology, emphasising the link, both physical and emotional, between performer and spectator. Schino's thesis is that Duse, through her acting and especially her magisterial use of the body, revolutionised the theatre by transforming the spectator's experience into an event that was never just entertainment, but constituted rather a radically destabilising, even life-changing existential occurrence.

The book is organised into three thematic sections, each comprising three chapters. Included are also a short biography of Duse, a useful index of names, a bibliography, and a wealth of black and white illustrations, most from the indispensable collection of the Cini Foundation. Unique to this volume are Schino's own analytical captions for each image, which provide thoughtful comparisons, commentary and context.

Section one traces the development of Duse as actress and capocomica. Although Schino stops short of calling her a director, a role which would have been historically impossible (p. 17), she shows how Duse worked on the texts, organised and provided guidelines for the actors and gave her imprint to each production, effectively providing personal interpretations of the plays. The point of entrance (Chapter 1) is Duse's approach over 30 years to the play that first made her famous, La signora delle camelie (La Dame aux camélias) by Alexandre Dumas. Schino shows how Duse's approach to her fairly narrow repertoire (including La signora delle camelie, which she staged even when she was already over 50) changed, yet maintained certain central features. Ironically, Duse never chose to produce a play by Pirandello even though she appreciated his work and he admired her and wrote La vita che ti diedi for her. Schino's attempt to explain this failure by attributing it to the weakness of Pirandello's play compared to others by him (p. 288) and a presumed incompatibility with Duse's acting style, however, strikes one as off target. The second chapter traces Duse's formation as she lived the nomadic and harsh life typical of the self-financed Italian travelling companies in the second half of the nineteenth century and her early determination – in spite of being a single mother and poor – to manage her own company, eventually leading it to international success, travelling abroad and expanding her own knowledge of the theatre. Chapter 3 analyses responses to her performances by some of her most famous and influential spectators, including George Bernard Shaw and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, tracing the development of her uniquely gestural and intimate acting technique, often minimalist and highly erotic.

Section two of the book addresses a different theme: that of Duse as an artist and creator of whole theatrical productions and projects. Schino outlines the major projects undertaken by Duse over the years, often with a passion verging on obsession. They include Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra as adapted by Arrigo Boito, her long and difficult alliance with Gabriele d'Annunzio, her productions of Ibsen's plays, and the work planned with avant-garde and experimental theatre visionaries Edward Gordon Craig and Aurélien Lugné-Poe. Schino looks at them as parts of a whole life project of ceaseless experimentation and innovation. It was this innovative spirit, she claims, that captured the admiration of avant-garde theatre personalities such as Craig and Isadora Duncan, Konstantin Stanislavski and Vsevolod Meyerhold.

Section three examines the last phase of Duse's life and career (1909–24), including her experiment with silent cinema and the thinking that went into the production of the masterful film Cenere, based on the novel by Grazia Deledda, followed by her last, glorious return to the stage in 1921, after a hiatus of 12 years. Her performances in London, Vienna and, finally, the United States became legendary. She died of pneumonia in Pittsburgh in 1924. Schino notes how rare it is for an actress to triumph in old age, as Duse did, when her performances became so intense as to evoke for many spectators, including Piero Gobetti, the feeling of a sacred and profoundly uncanny experience whose modernity was as undeniable as it was hard to define (p. 278). In 1922–3, Duse wanted to start a small, innovative theatre in Turin. Mussolini, although professing admiration for the great actress, never took this idea into consideration, offering her instead a retirement pension, which she declined. Young innovators of the Fascist era, including the influential Silvio D'Amico, were more oriented towards grand institutional projects such as that of a state-sponsored Italian National Theatre and rejected the allegedly antiquated heritage of the ‘Great Actor’. Covering the years 1922–4, Chapter 9 recounts Mussolini's meeting with Duse in December 1922 and Duse's dislike of the man. The core of the chapter is devoted to a brief account and interesting images of the spectacular multiple funerals of la Duse. The actors of her company had her body dressed in white and composed in an open casket lined with white satin and covered with a glass lid in a Pittsburgh funeral home, where she lay in state before the complex official transport by train (subsidised by Mussolini) to New York. There, the coffin was met by a huge crowd. The first official funeral service took place in the church of St Vincent Ferrer before the remains were sent across the ocean to Naples, where a multitude had assembled to greet the ship's arrival. The transport went on slowly by train to Rome, with thoudands of people paying homage along the way. There was another, more pompous state funeral in the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, and a final, crowded official ceremony took place in Asolo, attended by – among others – a deeply sorrowful d'Annunzio. Schino discusses the funeral largely as a political spectacle, but also focuses on some of the obituaries, especially an article by Matilde Serao, which sharply criticised the lack of real institutional support for Duse in Italy that the hypocritical Fascist ceremonies sought to obfuscate.