In seventeenth-century Mantua, the Gonzaga Duke objects to the violent ending of Monteverdi’s opera, Orfeo. With the help of Jewish composer, Salamone Rossi, Monteverdi supplies a new happy Act V. The original ending is lost. In twenty-first-century England, amateur musician, Emilia, discovers a faded musical manuscript in an East Anglian stately home. Turning detective, she reveals the truth behind a Golden Age: there is musical passion, secret loves, patronage, power, and academic skullduggery.

Michelene Wandor combines imagination, scholarship and musical expertise to bring the magic of Mantua, Florence and Venice to life. Across the centuries, harmony and discord vie for resolution in a story which thrills and shocks.