It's Rosh Hashanah and the famous Polish composer Manyushko pays a visit to the synagogue in Vilno to listen to the cantor Yoel Duvid Strashunsky sing.  Very impressed, the composer invites Yoel to his home to train him further in music.  Yoel replies, that his father taught him that singing with feeling is most important when it comes to being a cantor.  It is this belief that Yoel passes down to his son Peretz, but yet is intrigued by Beethoven and Chopin, which he hears at Manyushko's home.  And during his secret nightly visits to the composer, he learns to read music, too.  Nute, the synagogue's sexton, follows Manyushko one evening upon orders from Yoel's father-in-law, Reb Aaron, who has looked after Yoel since he was thirteen and groomed the child to be the synagogue's cantor.  When Reb Aaron finds out what's going on, he demands Yoel never set foot in the Pole's home again and reminds Yoel of the necessity for a cantor to keep his heart and thoughts clean, so the congregation's prayers remain pure in the eyes of God.  Yoel agrees not to return to Manyushko's house, but one evening, while out with his wife Chana, he hears Manyushko's new opera from a distance.  Seeing his desire to listen, Chana encourages him to go listen to the music.  For his part, the composer tells Yoel he's leaving for Warsaw in a few days to prepare for the opening of a new opera, Halka, and invites Yoel to be the lead singer in the piece.  When news of Yoel's deisre to go to Warsaw gets back to the congregation, a clash of cultures will take place, the results of which no one expects.

DVD-R is in Yiddish with hard-encoded English subtitles.  Approx. 82 mins. + a 4 min. contemporary newsreel.  Some softness.