The Light in the Piazza

About the show

The Light in the Piazza is a musical with music and lyrics by Adam Guettel, and a book by Craig Lucas. Based on the 1960 novella by Elizabeth Spencer, the show is set in the 1950s and tells the story of Margaret Johnson, a wealthy woman from the American South, and Clara, her daughter, who is developmentally disabled due to a childhood accident. The two spend a summer together in Florence, Italy. When Clara falls in love with a young Italian man, Fabrizio, Margaret is forced to reconsider not only Clara's future, but her own deep-seated hopes and regrets as well. The score breaks from the 21st century tradition of pop music on Broadway by moving into the territory of Neoromantic classical music and opera, with unexpected harmonic shifts and extended melodic structures, and is more heavily orchestrated than most Broadway scores. Many of the lyrics are in Italian or broken English, as many of the characters are fluent only in Italian.