Curtain-up on Cecilia's 'Ecce Homo' opera in Arizona
Tuesday, May 22, 2018 @ 12:03 AM
AN OPERA based upon the bizarre tale of an elderly lady's botched restoration of a 19th-century frescohas been aired in Arizona ahead of its world première.
Cecilia Giménez was 81 when, in 2012, she decided to restore the well-worn painting of the Ecce Homoin her local church in the sleepy Zaragoza province town of Borja.
An accomplished amateur artist who said the priest always gave her free rein to repair damaged artworks in the church, Cecilia's worst nightmare came true when the unfinished restoration of the Christ portrait hit the headlines, upsetting the painter's surviving relatives and leading to their threatening to sue her for six-figure sums for wilful damage.
But while Cecilia took to her bed with a panic attack, the world's press converged on Borja and campaigns and petitions were launched to leave the 'new' Ecce Homo as it was.
Visitors began to turn up from all over the world, Ryanair launched flights to Zaragoza for €1, and bars in the tiny market town said they had never enjoyed such a roaring trade.
Eventually, entry tickets to the church in Borja were charged and souvenirs created – including T-shirts, pens, mugs, keyrings and fridge magnets – featuring the 'new' version of the painting.
From being completely unheard of and surviving on agriculture and family-run local retail trade, Borja became a global tourism magnet and has been thriving for the last six years.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com