Due to a chance encounter with Mozart's orchestra en route to Rome to perform for the Pope, Dante Gabriele - a talented young violinist, tutored by his uncle a parish priest - decides to abandon his family farm in southern Italy and join the musicians. He is soon embroiled in a world of drugs, uninhibited sex, depraved aristocrats, love, treachery, white slavery and frustrated nuns in a remote mountain nunnery, and his life is almost destroyed when his lover is taken from him. Disillusioned with his fate and grieving over his lost love, Dante - now a fugitive from justice - eventually moves...