In a world gone mad with languid ladies and affected gentlemen, the lovesick maidens of Castle Bunthorne forsake their handsome soldier suitors to pursue poet aesthete - and fake - Reginald Bunthorne. But he loves the village milkmaid, Patience, who doesn't like poetry or understand love. When Patience finally learns what love is, it's Reginald's rival she falls for.

The opera takes place on the doorstep of a tenement on the East Side of Manhattan on two brutally hot days in 1946. The story focuses on two plotlines: the romance between Rose Maurrant and her neighbor Sam Kaplan; and on the extramarital affair of Rose's mother, Anna, which is eventually discovered by Rose's irritable father, Frank. The show portrays the ordinary romances, squabbles and gossips of the neighbors, as the mounting tensions involving the Maurrant family eventually build into a tragedy of epic proportions. Broadcast on BBC Two on New Years Day, 1993, this production was performed by the English National Opera and conducted by James Holmes.