Act One

Centoluci, 1928. Glitterati, movie icons, international press and teeming well-wishers descend on the tiny Alpine principality for the wedding of the decade. Cementing a link with her moneyed American family, the beautiful Constance Nielsen is chosen as the bride of Crown Prince Cedric, as Centoluci cunningly restores its monarchy, suppresses all detractors, and rakes in the profit while reinventing itself as the world's most glamorous destination |PERFECT|

​

1969. The once private secretary to Princess Constance, Artu Gualtieri, has passed away.  His grandson, Marcello, discovers that his inheritance has been whittled away for forty years by a standing order payment that his grandfather made to a music teacher on a Venezuelan island.  Marcello travels to the island in search of an explanation.

​

The island of Margarita |FIND SOME SHADE|.  The music teacher is a modest, seventy-something woman, Miss Vine.  Convinced that he has discovered his grandfather's mistress, Marcello is quick to demonize his grandfather, whom Miss Vine defends.  She recalls a man of overwhelming kindness and wit.  Marcello is in no mood for reminiscing but Miss Vine, determined to clear Gualtieri's name, continues...

​

Hopes are high and the fairytale wedding of 1928 is everything it needs to be, but the new Princess struggles to find her footing |I WONDER|.  She is determined to succeed |THE CONSTANCE EXPRESS|  and becomes patron of the renowned Music Festival.  Gualtieri 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 |SHE'LL READ A SCRIPT| .  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 is indeed more that he first seems: a trained conductor, but 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 epitomizes it.  Constance finds Alvaro to be refreshingly irreverent.  He is eventually taken aback by her disarming lack of pretense, and agrees to one lesson a week - not at the palace but in his attic. 

Alvaro has an infectious musical passion and explosive teaching style.  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 Rico jam in a much more relaxed approach to music |THE MEMORY OF YOU| , but Rico, a staunch anti-royalist, recognizes the Princess and is appalled that Alvaro would associate himself with her.

​

Alvaro leads Constance up to a terrace. The view across the famous lake is mesmerizing |CENTOLUCI|  and Alvaro confesses that most heartfelt dream is to replace his dire, cell-like attic for an apartment with a view like this |A LITTLE BALCONY|, from which he could take in the world.  Constance admires Alvaro's ambition and wishes she had such clarity, to which Alvaro replies that she must simply discover her own passion |BELIEVE IN ALL YOU DREAM| .

​

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 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 |TOUCH ME| , whose feelings for Alvaro begin distracting her from his teaching |THE KISS| .

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 a champion of the underprivileged |WONDERFUL AND YOURS| .  The expected polite applause is instead an ovation, and the nation takes her to its heart.