Vienna, 1777. The blind 18-year-old “Wunderkind” pianist Maria Theresia Paradis lost her eyesight when she was three years old. Her parents take her to the controversial “miracle doctor” Franz Anton Mesmer, where she joins a group of outlandish patients. She tastes freedom for the first time, but begins to notice that as the treatment brings back her eyesight, she is losing her cherished musical virtuosity. Barbara Albert’s “Mademoiselle Paradis” tells the tale of a social system based on prohibitions and repression, and of women who try to come to terms with it and find their own space within its restrictive structures. It is about what and how we see, and whether we should trust what we see.