By the seaside, a fisherman sits waiting to hear the Nightingale who delights him every night with her song. The Emperor’s cook arrives, with courtiers of the Emperor of China, in search of the Nightingale. When she appears, they offer her a formal invitation to sing for the Emperor at court. Although she will miss her forest, the Nightingale obeys the Emperor’s request, going off to the palace in a procession headed by the cook.

The palace of the Emperor is ablaze with lanterns decorated with little flowers. The cook, now Chief-High-Cook, describes to the court the little bird whose singing makes everyone weep. The Emperor arrives, announced by the Chamberlain, and the Nightingale begins to sing. So charmed is the monarch that he offers the bird the Order of the Golden Slipper, but the Nightingale sings only to give pleasure, and refuses the honor. Just then, three envoys from Japan offer the Emperor a mechanical nightingale and as the mechanical song begins, the real nightingale flies away. Insulted that she has flown away, the Emperor banishes her forever.

Sometime later, the Emperor is gravely ill. Death sits at the foot of the bed holding the imperial crown and sceptre, and ghosts of the Emperor’s good and bad deeds surround him. The Emperor calls for music and the banished Nightingale answers the call. Even Death is conquered by the loveliness of the song, and when the courtiers arrive, instead of finding the Emperor dead, they find him risen from his bed. As the lyric tale ends, the fisherman bids that all acknowledge, in the song of the Nightingale, the voice of heaven.