The mother of the first-person narrator is a successful lawyer who suppresses her son. She handles high-profile cases in the media while he struggles with obscure clients. Growing up without a father and raised in boarding schools, he plays an inferior role in his mother's law firm. It is only when he also engages with the world of his opera-obsessed mother that he manages to break free. He falls in love with a chorister, adores Anna Netrebko, and offers a magnificent soprano in contrast to his mother's worship of tenors.