It is over 500 years since Duke Claudio the Falcon lived his brutal, twisted life in Ruffano. But this is the twentieth century. The town has forgotten its violent history. Its university has a shiny new Commerce and Economics building: pointing to a golden future and flouting the dusty Humanities – and inhumanities – of the past.

         But have things really changed? Clearer and clearer the parallels are drawn: through murder, humiliation and outrage – to the horrifying flight of the modern Falcon, climax to a raucous travesty of a festival.