Supported avidly by his mother and more reluctantly at first by his father, a working-class Austrian boy joins the Vienna Choirboys, where he proves to be unusually talented. The standard initiation ordeals which new boys must endure at the hands of their seniors are intensified in his case because he has aroused the jealousy of Peter, the head chorister, by singing a solo which Peter had long sung himself. The fact is that Peter's voice is breaking, and with a broken voice often comes a broken heart. But, encouraged by the director and all the boys, Peter begins to develop in a new role as composer and conductor.