Geneva, 1972: When a stunning diamond necklace falls into the hands of Marcello, a fresh-faced journalist, it takes just one meeting with an expert jeweller to identify it as the jewellery of Her Serene Highness, Princess Constance of Centoluci. [Our Perfect Princess] Missing for over forty years, and traced to having come from a tiny island off the coast of Venezuela, the necklace was apparently sold by an ageing music teacher, whom Marcello will be on the next plane to meet. There's a story here, and he wants it.

The island of Margarita, a few days later: The music teacher is a modest, seventy-something woman, and Marcello, posing as a wealthy buyer, tricks her into showing him more jewels before coyly asking how exactly she has come to possess some of the most fabulous royal treasures ever made. The woman's first explanation is a transparent lie, and Marcello threatens to call the police. Cornered, she goes for the truth and spends the next three days trying to convince him that she desperately needs the cash from the sale of the jewels, that she longs to return to Centoluci someday, and… that she is in fact the princess to whom the jewellery belongs. This story will take some convincing, not least because the world is in no doubt that Princess Constance famously burned to death in 1929.

Centoluci, 1928: Glitterati, movie icons, international press and teeming well-wishers descend on the Alpine principality for the wedding of the decade. Cementing a link with her moneyed American family, Constance Nielsen is chosen as the bride of Crown Prince Cedric, as Centoluci cunningly restores its monarchy and determinedly reinvents itself as the world's most glamorous destination.

Hopes are high and the wedding is everything it needs to be. The bride is a sensation, [I Must Be Quite An Actress] the world watches the newsreels, and the all-important profits soar as hotel reservations rocket. Constance is overwhelmed by the countless tokens of esteem arriving from around the globe [Presentation Of The Gifts] and by her patronage of the renowned Music Festival. It is Gualtieri, her well-seasoned private secretary, who becomes her guide and confidant but not even he can save her from making an appalling gaffe while discussing music at the Festival's opening night. It is one of the waiters who leans forward to discreetly correct her mistake and helps her to save face. Constance is humiliated that a waiter at the Salles Symphoniques should know more about music than she, the patron! She instructs Gualtieri to engage for her a music tutor, [The Chance To Learn] but a series of candidates prove to be sycophantic, irritating and useless. Still mindful of the knowledgeable waiter, Constance suggests him for the job. Gualtieri counsels against such an outlandish breach of protocol but nevertheless makes enquiries when the Princess insists.

The waiter is Alvaro Vigna, and he is indeed more that he first seems: a trained conductor, but who has never been given a chance to lead an orchestra, a waiter by night and small-time music tutor by day. He refuses, however, to tutor the Princess. Indignantly, Constance visits his ghastly attic apartment and suggests that Alvaro, like her, is a fraud and knows less about music than was first supposed. Alvaro's sarcastic retort [That's All I Know] reveals his virtuosic musicianship - but he detests his beloved country's sudden celebrity culture, and how the Princess epitomises it. Constance finds Alvaro to be refreshingly irreverent. He is eventually taken aback by her disarming lack of pretence, and agrees to one lesson a week - not at the palace but in his attic.

Although impatient and wildly mercurial, Alvaro has an infectious musical passion and an explosive teaching style. [Look At All The Pictures Constance, by contrast, is stiff and uptight, and Alvaro curtails a lesson to show her a shabby part of the city. At Bar Scuro, Alvaro and his old pal Chaz jam in a much more relaxed approach to music, [The Memory Of You] and afterwards Constance is led up to a terrace. The view across the famous lake is mesmerising and Alvaro confesses that his greatest ambition is to replace his dire, cell-like attic for an apartment with a view like this. His most heartfelt dream is to have a balcony, from which he could take in the world. [My Balcony]

Constance is unmoved that her late return to the palace has prompted a security alert, and that the arrangement with her unorthodox tutor is now noted. Her husband's feigned concern while others are present disgusts her - she's already worked out that he is gay, that their marriage was merely part of Centoluci's audacious publicity machine. But she is deeply moved by her increasing fondness for Alvaro and, for one week only, her schedule dictates that he must teach her at the palace. His hilarious disrespect for everything within the palace's stuffy walls [Oh, What a Bore!] is irresistible to Constance, whose feelings for Alvaro begin distracting her from his teaching. [Touch Me] He senses her affection for him - it overwhelms her and she cannot hide it - but he chooses not to respond.

That evening, the Princess must deliver a pre-written speech. The subject is music scholarship, one that is immensely close to Alvaro's heart. He strongly disagrees with her text, suggesting countless changes, but any would be unthinkable. When the moment comes, Constance nervously begins as planned, only then to deviate widely from the text, throwing in not just Alvaro's changes but several of her own. She suddenly finds herself to be confident and articulate, and at the end the expected polite applause is instead an ovation. She is a triumph and, privately to Gualtieri, credits Alvaro with all she has become. [Reprise: The Chance To Learn] Anxious to share the moment, she impulsively makes for Alvaro's apartment - but is utterly horrified by what she finds there.

Interval.

Alvaro has been beaten up. He knows it was a warning to stay away from the Princess, but passes it off to her as a mugging. His brutal warning has had the opposite-to-intended effect, and his stirred defiance now clouds his judgement as he not only accepts Constance's long-standing offer to help his career, but also drops his reserve towards her and at last consummates their till-now platonic love affair with a kiss. She cannot see what a dreadful mistake they are making: she just sees and loves this most intensely passionate of men.

The Crown Prince's fearsome aunt, The Grand Duchess Cesara, breaks her imperious silence and, fearing a scandal, reminds the Princess of her duty. [The Burning Of The Flags] But Constance is absorbed with Alvaro, and their “music lessons” are now spent making love in his attic and planning a future. [You'll Be Beautiful] This is the happiest time of their lives. They know they are breaking the rules but feel invincible. Constance has arranged for Alvaro to conduct at the Salles Symphoniques, fuelling both excitement among his pals at Bar Scuro [The Next Big Thing] and incessant gossip across Centoluci and in the international press. Shocked by scandalous reports, some investors, including Constance's own father, are cancelling their sponsorship, and Centoluci's once-perfect princess seems now a dangerous liability. The next and final warning is from Gualtieri, [Listen To The Silence] who fears terrible consequences should it go unheeded.

The opening night of the 1929 Music Festival clashes with Constance's regular music lesson, and the palace now presume that nothing will make her miss a meeting with Alvaro, but they are wrong. She and Alvaro have spent the day parting. They have realised that they are not the great conductor and the glamorous princess: they are the disgrace of Centoluci. Impossibly painful though it is, there will be no more lessons, no more meetings - it is their duty. When the Princess appears at the palace, ready to join the royal party, there is a palpable shock and consternation in the air. She is obviously not expected and, sensing danger, she commands Gualtieri to drive her back to Alvaro's apartment.

They find the entire building ablaze. In a vein attempt to rescue Alvaro, they burst through onlookers to run inside, but it is pointless: the flames and poisoning smoke make the stairwell un-scalable, and Constance passes out. Gualtieri thinks quickly, covering the Princess with his coat before discretely carrying her out to safety alongside other choking survivors. Many saw her enter, no one saw her leave. As the world begins to believe that she has perished along with her lover, [The Broadcast and National Anthem] Gualtieri drives her through the night, over the mountains, and across the border. Despite official reports, he knows that the fire was no accident: the palace wants their Princess dead, and so he lets them think they have succeeded. Numbed with grief, Constance is secretly passed through Gualtieri's network of contacts, given a new identity, and a new home an ocean away.

1972: Marcello, now convinced and deeply affected by Constance's revelations, insists that her story remain untold while she is living. He will wait to tell it - it will be his pension. She will not reveal why she wants to return to Centoluci but, if it is fear for her safety that prevents it, the threat of publication could bargain against a second attempt on her life - the story will be her insurance policy. They make a trade: he gives her an airfare to Centoluci, and she entrusts to him all but one of her priceless jewels - they plainly cannot be sold but they will one day corroborate his story.

Prince Cedric believes he will be interviewed by a Venezuelan journalist and, on meeting his wife, does not immediately recognise her… until he notices her wedding ring. Though not directly responsible for her attempted murder, he suspects she's here to blackmail him. But it is not a fortune that Constance seeks. She asks only for a small pension and an apartment - with a balcony and a view of the lake. Nothing more. Bemused and relieved, Cedric makes the necessary arrangements.

[No.6 Via Garibaldi] Constance enters her new home. It bears quite a resemblance to Alvaro's attic of so many years before, except for the light that pours in through giant windows. And there, at the back of the room, a large set of glass doors leads out onto: a balcony. Constance opens it, steps outside, and feels close again to the man she still loves. The balcony is everything, and exactly as, her dear Alvaro had imagined - it's his dream at last come true.

Concept recording
Character notes
Production requirements

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