A COMEDY operetta centred on the 'restoration' of the Ecce Homo fresco in Borja (Zaragoza) by 85-year-old parishioner Cecilia Giménez will go live in the USA next year and be staged in the painting's home town in 2017.
Playwright Andrew Flack, from Denver, Colorado said his friend, composer Paul Fowler had been 'hassling him for years' to write an operetta, and he got his long-awaited idea after reading a news article titled Crazy old woman ruins priceless masterpiece.
“Residents were furious, but Cecilia didn't seem crazy to me – she came across very well,” said Flack.
Cecilia (pictured below right), then 82, had started to restore the badly-deteriorated 1930s fresco in her local church under her own steam, something she says she had always done before and with the priest's full knowledge and blessing, for no pay, merely because she loved art.
She maintains that when the 'restored' painting hit the headlines, she had barely started, and that it was not intended to remain that way.
Initially, the small land-locked town in Aragón was in uproar and the descendants of the artist planning to sue her for wilful destruction, but such was the media repercussion that curious tourists from all over the world started to flock to Borja to see the 'botched' restoration for themselves.
Petitions followed, calling for the fresco to be left as it was, and now, the church charges tickets for visitors to view it and take 'selfies' with it.
Bars, shops, hotels and restaurants in a town that, prior to 2012, nobody had ever heard of are now doing a roaring trade – and low-cost carrier Ryanair began running flights to Zaragoza from the UK and Ireland for €1.
Borja has never looked back, and now, Cecilia's story is about to become art in other ways.
Flack said he rang Fowler and said: “Paul, here's the idea – a woman ruins a nearly-worthless fresco and saves an entire town.”
The playwright travelled to Borja in September 2013 to meet Cecilia in person and, in 2014, finished the libretto for the first act.
By July this year, the libretto for act two was penned....
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