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Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, A Production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

Every single one of us, in our own way, is passing through history.

We have no way of knowing exactly who is going to earn their place in a history book on the main page,

or who will wind up as mere footnotes.

But those of us who read history for a living know one thing to be true, there's more life in between the lines than any history book can tell us, and it's

there that the most fascinating questions live. Follow me to the Haymarket Theatre in London

in the year 1745. An opera called Lyn Costanza Daluzza has just premiered,

a lavish spectacle. But what made this opera notable was not its content or its production,

but a little-known musician who contributed three arias that he'd written. He had just arrived in

Europe, and writers of the time described him as suave and charming,

with dark hair and a fine sense of dress.

This man was arrested in London that same year under suspicion of spying, but later released

due to lack of evidence.

Horace Walpole, the famous British author and politician, referred to him in one of his letters.

He has been here these two years and will not tell who he is or whence, but profess that he

does not go by his right name. He sings, plays the violin wonderfully, composes, is mad, and not

very sensible. He is called an Italian, a Spaniard, a pole, a somebody that married

...