This movie was based on the life of conductor Daniel Barenboim and his wife, cellist Jacqueline du Pré, whose life was examined in Hilary and Jackie (1998).
In 1987, on the set of Barfly (1987), Faye Dunaway told movie critic Roger Ebert that she was originally cast in the role of Stephanie Anderson.
The movie's source 1980 stage play of the same name by playwright Tom Kempinski is a "two-hander", which means it features an entire cast of just two performers, in this case just the one actor and just the one actress.
Reportedly, this movie is only minimally fictionalized from its source material about the lives of cellist Jacqueline du Pré and conductor Daniel Barenboim, which mainly includes its source 1980 stage play of the same name by Tom Kempinski.
Prior to when this movie debuted, another movie made for television debuted, which was also called Duet for One (1985), and was based on the same source Tom Kempinski play.