Diana, the Enchantress

The great Italian opera composer recalls his eventful life on his deathbed: his childhood in Busseto, his studies in Milan, his first opera "Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio", the death of his wife and his children killed by smallpox.

During the first Napoleonic expedition into Italy, Thibaud is seriously injured before being caught up in a mystery involving his wife, her rightful inheritance and his own daughter's happiness.

Best friends Peppe and Mario are thieves, but they're not very good at it. Still, Peppe thinks that he's finally devised a master heist that will make them rich. With the help of some fellow criminals, he plans to dig a tunnel from a rented apartment to the pawnshop next door, where they can rob the safe. But his plan is far from foolproof, and the fact that no one in the group has any experience digging tunnels proves to be the least of their problems.

An actor fails to find success in the film world but falls in love with a theatre manager's daughter.

France, 1860. A young widow is wrongly accused of murder and, after serving many years in prison, she escapes to find the real culprit.

Train operator Andrea Marcocci has to witness the suicide of a desperate man who jumps in front of his train. Under the influence of this shock he starts making mistakes. A check up by a doctor reveals that he's at the brink of becoming an alcoholic. Due to this evaluation he is degraded and must accept a salary cut.

The construction of great temple dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite, followed by new and high taxes and the arrival of a plague, create discontent in the population, and threatens the love between a sculptor and a slave.

Greedy Baron Antonio Peletti refuses to give to his town the heredity left by his father, a box full of precious jewels, which he keeps for himself. The major and the rest of the townspeople therefore organize a trick at his expense: they'll make him believe he is dead, and, in a fake "afterlife", they'll try to convince him to finally show them where the money is hidden to save his soul.

A taxi driver, with singing ambitions, finds an abandoned baby in his cab and begins to look for his mother. He doesn't find her but succeeds in finding two people who want to adopt the child.

The actress Francesca Bertini, as every diva worthy of her name, always arrives on the set extremely late. One day, in the studio, she happened to hear a colleague actor who, back from the front, tells about the brutalities suffered by the civilians in the occupied territories. At night, still troubled by that story, Bertini falls asleep and dreams: in her dream she plays the role of Mariute, a young Friulian countrywoman, mother of three kids waiting for her husband homecoming from the frontline. One day, while she is going to the well for water, she is assaulted and molested by three enemy soldiers. Her father-in-law will avenge her. In the meantime Bertini, waking up with a start, will arrive to work on time and she will end the film inviting the public to put their savings into the war bonds.

Don Camillo (now bishop) and Peppone (now senator) return to the town of Brescello and rekindle their friendly rivalry.

Nicola Peccoli has always nurtured his niece Giovanna, an orphan since the age of two and now of age, but he does not look favorably on her beloved Mario because he is just a simple employee and a lower class of society.

A Sicilian nobleman is very jealous of his mistress and when she gets married flies off his handle and commits a murder of which an innocent man is accused. He is however tormented by his conscience.

The film covers a hundred years in the lives of the Ricordi family, the Milan publishing house of the title, and the various composers and other historic personalities, whose careers intersected with the growth of the Ricordi house. It beautifully draws the parallel between the great music of the composers, the historic and social upheavals of their times, as well as the "smaller stories" of the successive generations of Ricordi.