A fable of tragedy, obsession and destiny underset by the enduring power of love and music.
A lute of exquisite workmanship is crafted in Italy in the dark age of the mid 15th century by a master luthier. But this lute is more than a musical instrument; it is a memorial to love lost in a brutal tragedy, a reliquary of tormented love.
Along with a rare manuscript of music, the lute survives into the present to touch the lives of two lovers, and as its astonishing provenance is gradually revealed in restoration and cast in the light of the manuscript, its enchantment of them hints of deep unrest and a vague, haunting connection with lives long gone as though the lute and its music channel, in some mysterious and dreadful way, spiritual energy from past to present.
And just as objects and things, once originated, are accorded character by the interaction of all the individual histories that impinge upon them, and so by their own unique histories, then so too are people.