Venice, 1745, is an age of reckless pleasures, playful artifice, and baroque excess. An accident has reduced Tito Amato's glorious singing voice to a husky croak. But now the male soprano is determined to prove himself as a director. As the Teatro San Marco is losing subscribers to a rival company, the theater's Maestro Torani charges Tito with locating the perfect opera to fill the seats in time for Carnival.

Surprisingly, a second-rate composer provides the very thing—an opera so replete with gorgeous melodies the public speculates it was written by the late Antonio Vivaldi. Even more disconcerting are the rumors swirling around Angeletto, a male soprano imported from Naples to sing the lead. Is the singer truly a castrato or a female soprano engaging in a daring but lucrative masquerade?

Both matters turn dangerous when Maestro Torani is viciously attacked and killed. And Tito is the prime suspect. His own life as well as the future of Teatro San Marco now depend on his skills as a sleuth....