A passionate musician from the provinces arrives in Vienna in the early years of the Napoleonic era. Dark and exotic, he captures the hearts of music-lovers, but cannot win the one woman he loves because of class differences. As a second love, perhaps the greatest of his life, eludes his grasp, he realizes he is also losing the one sense no musician can live without: his hearing. Driven nearly to suicide, Luis places his hopes in the triumph of a hero who will save the human race and dissolve the obstacles placed between people by prejudice and class barriers. Yet as Napoleon shows his true colors, is Art itself the path to salvation that Luis seeks?