One hundred years ago
A frightful calamity has taken place at Nice. The opera-house, where Signora Bianca Donadio was about to play in Lucia, was on Wednesday set on fire by a gas explosion before the performance commenced, but after the house had nearly filled. The rush for the doors of course killed more than the fire itself, and the house being in darkness, except for the light of the flames — which, from the nature of their origin, do not seem to have lit up the whole house — the panic was all the more disastrous. The prima donna escaped, but many of the performers were killed; and some of the richer company. The worst destruction, however, befell the poorer classes in the galleries. Sixty-nine bodies had been recovered up to our last intelligence. Can nothing be done to multiply the exits from all such fire-traps as this?
Spectator, 26 March 1881
Previous page
