He set a Spanish libretto by Manuel Mujica Laínez, based on his 1962 novel about the 16th-century Italian eccentric Pier Francesco Orsini.

The opera makes use of twelve-tone techniques, quarter tones – primarily in the harp parts – and controlled stochastic textures of non-synchronous repetitions of motifs and cells.

The work had been scheduled for its first performance in Argentina on 4 August 1967 at the Teatro Colón, but the Argentine de facto president, Juan Carlos Onganía, had banned the production, objecting to the sexual content of the story.

His father drags the young Pier Francesco into a room where a large skeleton dances and haunts him.

As time passes, the Duke creates large stone sculptures on his estate, symbolic of his tortured feelings.