Giuseppe Verdi was born in 1813 and lived until 1901, his life spanning nearly a century of political turmoil and considerable personal turmoil. This 1982 biographical television miniseries, as seen on PBS's Great Performances, dramatizes the life of this classic Italian composer known for operas including La Traviata, Rigoletto, and Aida and his Requiem.

While on an automobile tour of Italy with his mother, the German publisher in this story has an accident which results in her death. He decides to stay and look for work in Italy, rather than return to his responsibilities, and takes a job working on a construction site. His co-workers are similarly displaced men: one is a Greek exile, the other a Basque terrorist. The elaborate house they are working on is to be the home of a wealthy local man.

A second coming? This time our savior chose a shantytown outside Turin, in the north of Italy, overcrowded by poor families coming from the south in search of a job in a factory, or less legal ways to survive. Young Maria (Cinzia De Carolis) can predict the future during her epileptic seizures, or at least that's what everyone believes, and her mother (Clelia Matania) sells her predictions and responses to the superstitious neighbors, after inducing her "trance" with electricity. One night the shock is too strong, and Maria seems to die: when she wakes up, she is found pregnant. And being a honest unmarried girl from the south, she is obviously still virgin... Notwithstanding the opposition of the local priest (Turi Ferro), everyone, including her, believes in the miracle, and prepares for a second coming, in a crescendo of fanaticism that is soon noticed by the press, and by the official church..