A delight for the eyes and the ears.
This January 28, 2015, the spectators of the Théâtre du Capitole, in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne), do not shy away from their pleasure.
After more than five hours of performance, the premiere of Tristan et Yseult, Richard Wagner's famous opera, ends with a sumptuous finale.
Yseult sings of his pain, while Tristan lies on the ground, dead, a cardboard rock gently lowering above him.
Activated by steel cables, the object must come to a stop precisely 60 cm from the ground.
But that evening, the piece of scenery does not stop ... Robert Dean Smith, Tristan's interpreter, dodges him with a roll, while the machinist activates the emergency brake.
The room laughs heartily, but internally, we look shabby.
Not only does Robert Dean Smith come close to death - the false rock weighs more than 200 kg - but the checks quickly show that it is not a technical problem: the settings of the rock were intentionally modified the day before representation by an anonymous hand.
A deleterious climate in the team
Six years to the day after this incident, a Toulouse examining magistrate has decided to send a machinist from the Capitol to the criminal court, who will have to answer for this Machiavellian sabotage.
According to justice, by performing this malicious act, Nicolas S. was not targeting the American tenor.
He would actually have sought to harm his colleague in charge of the sets that evening ...
A shot of three-cushion billiards while the team was in a deleterious atmosphere, and the two men had already come to blows.
Two months earlier, Richard R. had been convicted of violence against his colleague.
“He therefore has no motive, reason My Emmanuelle Franck and Alexandre Martin, lawyers of Nicolas S., who disputes the facts.
If anyone could want revenge, it's not him: he had just won the case!
"
The investigation, carried out initially internally, however showed that the hacking of the computer system had taken place the day before the first, at 6:19 pm, in the space of forty seconds.
And among the handful of machinists capable of such manipulation, only Nicolas S. would still have been there at that time.
This is evidenced by the entry badges, but also his mobile phone, which “kills” until 6:23 pm, without knowing however whether he is still inside or simply in the Capitol area.
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The latter may have produced the receipt of a store located 12 km away, and time-stamped at 7:01 p.m., the police felt that he would have had perfectly enough time to go behind the scenes, change the settings, get on his motorbike and make this purchase.
“From the start, the whole reasoning in this case is to say: it
can only be him,
indignant the duo of lawyers.
And this, while suspects were ruled out straight away, and there are other hypotheses ”.
The tenor never became a civil party
Tenor Robert Dean Smith (center) / Patrice Nin
Richard R., for example, was never heard in this investigation.
No more than some machinists close to him, whose telephony has never been verified.
“We demanded it, as it should have been done from the start.
But, years later, it was too late… ”, regret the penalists, who do not exclude that their client may have, why not, been the victim of a conspiracy.
“In any event,” they say, “his guilt is not established.
He has, moreover, kept the confidence of his employers since he now runs a theater in the Toulouse conurbation ”.
Robert Dean Smith, meanwhile, never responded to investigators, nor did he become a civil party.
Originally prosecuted for willful violence, Nicolas S., 41, will ultimately have to answer for "obstructing the operation of an automated data system" and "fraudulent modification of data", facts punishable by a maximum of five years. in prison and a fine of 150,000 euros.
Contacted, the lawyer for the town hall of Toulouse, civil party, did not wish to speak.
