The Light in the Piazza is a musical with a book by Craig Lucas and music and lyrics by Adam Guettel. Based on a novella by Elizabeth Spencer, the story is set in the 1950s and revolves around Margaret Johnson, a wealthy Southern woman and Clara, her daughter who is developmentally disabled due to an unfortunate encounter with her birthday pony. The two spend a summer together in Italy. When Clara falls in love with a young Italian man, Margaret is forced to reconsider not only Clara's future, but her own deep seated hopes and regrets as well. The score breaks from the 21st century tradition of pop music on Broadway by moving into the territory of Neoromantic classical music and opera, with unexpected harmonic shifts and extended melodic structures, and is more heavily orchestrated than most Broadway scores. Many of the lyrics are in Italian or broken English, as many of the characters are fluent only in Italian.