Frances Angel, drunk and disgruntled, arrives in Italy to attend the I Zingari Art School, leaving behind her dazzling career as a successful theatrical impresario and returning to a distant and painful past. She falls into an eclectic group of performance artists, ex soldiers and a housewife who really just wants to paint something to match her settee. In the village a scale replica of the La Scala opera house becomes the setting for the great drama...