Puccini's Ghosts

For one woman, no matter what has happened through the decades, the music will always linger

Burnhead is an inconspicuous town on the Scottish coast, but for Lila Du Cann, it is the setting for an opera that will change her life forever. When Lila returns to Burnhead to bury her father, she thinks back to 1960, when she fell in love for the first time.

Her parents are in a failing marriage. Lila’s mother, Fleur, splits time between two hobbies: arguing with her husband about life and money and retreating to her music room to listen to Puccini’s Turandot. Lila’s family, however, is thrown a lifeline when her charismatic and flamboyant uncle arrives from London with a hare-brained idea: an amateur staging of Turandot. With Fleur in the title role and Lila as the slave girl Liu, the production’s most intriguing casting is George’s handsome young student Joe Foscari as the tenor lead, Prince Calaf. Lila quickly falls for him and hopes that he feels the same about her.

As opening night looms, secrets are exposed, high hopes are torn apart, and Lila’s painful coming-of-age brings with it devastating lifelong consequences.