It is the summer of 1933. Set against a backdrop of the sparkling Venetian lagoon, young and naïve Irma Lietzen, the pretty and indulged daughter of a Budapest businessman, is being taken to see the world by her parents. They stop for several weeks in Venice, where Aurelian, a young man once employed as Mr Lietzen’s secretary, is given the job of showing Irma the sights.

Irma has plans for what this might involve but Aurelian, it seems, has other ideas. Author and playwright Ferenc Molnár (1878–1952) was one of the pre-eminent literary fi gures of early 20th-century Hungary. In 1940 he emigrated to the United States, where his play ‘Liliom’ was adapted as the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical 'Carousel’.