In 2010, Carlisle Floyd, one of American opera’s most titanic talents, found himself at an impasse. Caring for family and with few leads as to his next project, he unexpectedly found a spark of inspiration in the story of Edward Kynaston. This seventeenth-century British actor had his star turn on the stage unceremoniously ended by a ban on male actors performing women's roles. Centuries later, his misfortune gave this brilliant composer a way back onto the stage he valued so much....

The sham magus and master poisoner Cagliostro schemes to establish world domination with his "Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry," using drugs and sex to lure influential supporters; and murder, to eliminate composers, writers, architects, and painters who refuse to glorify him as the order's "Grand Copht." In the dead of the winter of 1769-1770, on the cusp of turning fourteen, Papa Leopold and I, your humble servant Wolf Mozart, seek court appointments and commissions in Italy. On the road to ...