It takes place in Germany, Austria and Russia with the backdrop stories of the World War I and the Russian Revolution.

[8][9] In October, 1973, after completed the long story The Rose of Versailles on the Margaret, she travelled to the Europe with her friend manga artists Toshie Kihara and Yōko Tadatsu (JA) for about one month or one and half months.

[10] There, Ikeda was inspired and visioned the stories of the music and romance which she could not fully express in The Rose of Versailles.

One was the editors of Margaret who asked and forced her to make Oscar a strong, high pride female protagonist.

What Ikeda wished to depict was the adult human love and life, but the media Margaret did not allow it.

She calmly judged that Margaret was not proper media where she expressed and realized her true themes.

Through this four parts story, there are three major characters: Julius von Ahrensmeyer, a daughter of the aristocratic house Ahrensmeyer of the Kingdom of Bayern, Alexei Mikhailov (alias Klaus Sommerschmitt), a son of the Marquis House of the Russian Empire, and Isaak Gotthelf Weisheit, a prodigious pianist born in the common people.

[13][14][15] In the Autumn of 1903,[16][17] a boy comes to the Saint Sebastian music school as a transfer student in Regensburg, Bayern, Germany.

There is a legend dating back about 400 years ago in the Catholic Saint Sebastian school.

But it will bring pain, for the love will end up like the tragic Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

For revenge against the Ahrensmeyers, Renate gave her daughter a male name Julius and raised her as a boy.

Julius learns piano from her earliest days, so she enters the Saint Sebastian school as a boy when she is 15.

But the legend of the Window casts a shadow on her mind since she is a girl, and she starts feeling a kind of love toward Klaus, a manlike, yet mysterious student.

The newly rising merchant house Kippenberg is a rich family, while the Ahrensmeyer's is declining.

More of the secrets of the Ahrensmeyers are unraveled, but in the course of the search, Klaus, real name Alexei Mikhailov, suddenly disappears, having returned to his homeland, Russia.

[20] However, it seems to be impossible to play this music on piano, with Reinhard even damaging his fingers in the attempt, but Isaak is determined to try.

Isaak debuts as an outstanding new pianist, and Reinhard gives him advice and a warning: "You should know what is true art".

Learning from Reinhard and Wilhelm Backhaus, Isaak opens up a new frontier of musical art.

He later returns to Regensburg with his son Jubel, and when walking along an old, familiar street, Isaak meets a beautiful woman.

The story begins about 10 years before the three main characters, Isaak, Julius and Klaus (Alexei) meet in Regensburg, Germany in 1903.

He meets his elder brother Dmitri, who is secretly a revolutionary, but also famous as a genius violinist.

In the confusion, Julius is reunited with Alexei, but she briefly does not remember him due to a bout of amnesia.

Marquis Yusupov decides to assassinate Rasputin of behalf of the Tsar Nikolai II.

In the cold water of the Neva River, Alexei remembers the Window of Orpheus.

His sister Vera Yusupova departs Russia for Regensburg with Julius, in order to keep the promise she made to her brother.

Kerenski seizes power, but he soon escapes from the Winter Palace, and the Bolsheviks win.

One morning they read a newspaper article which says a certain unidentified woman[22] insists she is a royal princess of Russia, the youngest daughter, Anastasia.

But according to one editor, Orpheus has a higher completeness than Versailles in the view point of the artistic achievement as manga story, including its picture quality.

[29] The 1970s is the epoch for Japanese shōjo manga from the various view points in cultural and social phenomena.

The fruits of the Year 24 Group were ripened in this period, and the Japanese manga and subcultural industries themselves had largely developed and diversified in this epoch.