It had to happen sometime!
One million minus one to go!
This picture reminds me of an opera I was involved in back in the late 70's. It was called "Goyescas"
and the music was by the Spanish composer Granados.
The music is beautifull and so were the costumes. Wardrobe however was unable to supply the ladies of the chorus with fans. We were told to beg, borrow or steal black or white lace fans.
I was loudly (my usual decibel level) lamenting the lack of said accessory when the tenor lead said, quite without prompting, "My wife has an antique black lace fan on a tortoishell frame, it was my grandmothers, you can borrow it"
To cut a long, embarassing story short, I did borrow, decided as it was very dusty I would wash it before returning it, and taking, I thought, very great care to hand-wash in soapflakes and rinse carefully, this lovely grubby thing I found upon drying it carefully with a hair dryer, that the lace had parted from the frets.
I think I went into every antique shop in London trying to discover what I could do to rescue the fan, without success until someone backstage suggested I try a few tiny drops of superglue.
Heart in mouth that was what I did, and to my amazement it worked very well indeed, so much so, that when I returned the fan without of course owning up to what had happened, the response from my tenor friend was "I don't know how you got it clean but it looks great, you can borrow it again any time"!
I'm afraid I never did own up but since that day I have never borrowed anything of value from anyone.
