Does a ghost haunt the Nice Opera?
If there is a ghost, then he must have some grudge against the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848).
It all starts with an accident that every troupe director shares the fear of: a key singer in the show falls ill the day before the premiere of
Lucia di Lammermoor
,
Donizetti's most popular opera, presented in a staging by Stefano Vizioli .
Baritone Mario Cassi is replaced at short notice by Vladimir Stoyanov to ensure the inaugural performance on February 17.
The Nice opera had not yet come to the end of its troubles.
Before the second performance of
Lucia di Lammermoor,
scheduled for February 19, tenor Oreste Cosimo in turn falls ill, just hours before the new curtain rises.
The moment is serious.
The American soprano Kathryn Lewek then offers a solution: to have her husband play.
By a stroke of luck, he turns out to be miraculously qualified for the role.
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“Her husband is a tenor
,” reports
Nice Matin
, which on Wednesday revealed the recent misfortunes of the municipal opera.
Better still, the interested party, Zach Borichevsky, has a special relationship with this work by Gaetano Donizetti.
“He already sang
Lucia di Lammermoor…
eight years ago!
, continues the Nice daily.
It was on this occasion that they met and fell in love
.
Zach Borichevsky thus replaces his colleague, for the duration of two performances.
However, Italian opera has already played a big trick on the establishment in Nice, almost 150 years ago.
In 1881, a terrible fire broke out at the start of a performance of
Lucia di Lammermoor
.
"Cries of 'fire, fire!'
left from all corners of the theater and the panic became appalling”
, then told
Le Figaro
, in its edition of March 25.
The accident resulted in 63 dead, more than a hundred injured and a building in ashes.
The drama shook the country, made the front page of Le
Monde illustré
.
The investigation concluded that there was a gas leak.
A pyramidal monument erected in the cemetery of the Château still pays homage to the victims today.
The appetite for Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia has at least waned a little over the centuries.