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 of Frances’ past to be played out on the world’s smallest stage. Frances expected to find some answers, but what she didn’t expect was romance and quite so much farce. Abridged.