The strings sweep upwards, the horns surge, and Leoncavallo’s Zaza throws itself into your arms. We don’t know it yet, but we’ve just heard the drama’s focal point: what David Lynch would call its ‘eye of the duck moment’. The same music recurs near the end of Act One, as the fumbling attempts at seduction of the small-time showgirl Zaza finally come good, and she locks lips with Milio Dufresne, the Parisian dandy who she imagines will take her away from the seedy, bustling demi-monde that we see laid out around her.