The Story

THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA takes place in Italy in the summer of 1953. Margaret Johnson, the wife of a well-heeled American businessman, is touring the Tuscan countryside with her daughter, Clara. While sightseeing, Clara, a beautiful, surprisingly childish young woman, loses her hat in a sudden gust. As if guided by an unseen hand, the hat lands at the feet of Fabrizio Naccarelli, a handsome Florentine, who returns it to Clara. This brief episode, charged with coincidence and fate, sparks an immediate and intense romance between Clara and Fabrizio.

Margaret, extremely protective of her daughter, attempts to keep Clara and Fabrizio apart. As THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA unfolds, a secret is revealed: in addition to the cultural differences between the young lovers, Clara is not quite all that she appears. Unable to suppress the truth about her daughter, Margaret is forced to reconsider not only Clara's future, but her own hopes as well.

Elizabeth Spencer's first book, Fire in the Morning, was published in 1948 and her most recent, The Southern Woman, in 2001. THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA, the first work to bring her widespread acclaim, was published in The New Yorker (which devoted an entire issue to its publication) and then was released as a novel in 1960. In adapting it to the stage, Craig Lucas (Prelude to a Kiss, Reckless) has distilled the novella to relate a poignant tale of two unusual young people who fall in love and to explore the essence of love itself.

The score by Adam Guettel (Floyd Collins, Saturn Returns) is romantic and passionate. He has written music and lyrics that reveal the feelings of all of the characters in THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA in soaring melodies.