While his daughter Anna flirts with Strauss and Lanner at the same time, the businessman Karl Friedrich Hirsch convince the two musicians to play music in parallel in Streim's inn and in other places.
When Anna gives birth to their son Johann ("Schani"), Strauss prefers to play with the Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini, who has shown enthusiasm for his music.
Because his lover Emilie Trampusch gives birth to a son, Strauss decides, despite the homesickness of his orchestra, to prolong his concert tour to France.
However, Schani does not enjoy Drechslers' lessons on fugues and would rather, contrary to his mother's plans, compose waltzes and set up an orchestra with his friend Gustav Levi.
Lanner dies unexpectedly; due to Prince Metternich's influence, Strauss becomes his successor as music director to the imperial court.
Prince Metternich urges Strauss to end the conflict with his son, but then, at Hirsch's suggestion, sends Schani as a cultural ambassador to Romania.
Prince Metternich is deposed and Emperor Ferdinand I abdicates; his successor is his nephew Franz Joseph I. Escaping from the revolution with other upper-class citizens, Johann Strauss has an affair with the singer Jetty Treffz, the lover of the banker Moritz von Todesco [de]; when he returns to Vienna, he performs the Radetzky March in Radetzky's honour.
Schani is allowed to visit his terminally ill father, but comes too late: Emilie Trampusch has gone and has left Johann Strauss's naked body in the house.
When Strauss has to go to the sanatorium for three months because of overwork, his brother Josef - who works as an engineer - replaces Johann as music director at the insistence of his mother.
Since Johann's stay in the sanatorium results in a lack of new waltzes, Josef begins to compose; a little later their brother Eduard turns to music as well.
While the Strauss brothers quarrel over contract negotiations and Johann's choice of spouse, Austria experiences a defeat in the Austro-Prussian War in 1866.
Johann celebrates a success in Paris at the 1867 Exposition Universelle when he performs his music transposition of the poem, the waltz The Blue Danube, without text.
Since Johann reacts cautiously to an offer from the impresario Charles Gilmore to host an American tour, Jetty informs him only when they are in America that he had received a telegram in France with the news of his mother's death.
During an argument, Angelika miscarries; due to rumours that she was having an affair, Johann asks for a divorce and, on the advice of family lawyer Dr. Halmi, travels to Hungary.
After Angelika does not consent to the divorce, Strauss finds legal help from Dr. Halmi's widowed daughter-in-law Adele, who has opened a law firm in Budapest.
While working on his new operetta Der Zigeunerbaron, Johann converts to Protestantism and becomes a citizen of the German Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in order to divorce Angelika and marry Adele; Eduard is his successor as music director to the imperial court.