A co-production between Italy and Germany, two separate versions were produced in the respective languages.

The film's sets were designed by the art directors Ivo Battelli and Guido Fiorini.

In nineteenth-century Italy, promising singer Rosi Belloni meets American music student Harry Peters and the two become engaged and she falls pregnant by him.

Five years later Peters, now a conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, returns to Italy with his new American wife.

Encountering the five-year-old son who has been raised to honour the idea of his father, Peters comes to realise what he missed by not marrying Belloni.