Silenced Guitar
Cases unlock in order, like levels. This is case 39 of 100.
Teatro Alameda, Seville, flamenco festival night, 10:20 pm. 'La Niña', a guitar built in 1911 by master Julián Arcos and valued at 400,000 euros, has vanished from dressing room 3.
Guitarist Joaquín Heredia, its owner, left it in the dressing room at 9:45 pm, at the start of the intermission. At 10:15 pm, when he came back for the closing number, it was gone.
The police sealed the exits and the loading yard at 10:20 pm. No outsider got backstage. Three people moved around back there during the intermission, and one of them is lying.
Rehearsal room behind the stage, stained mirrors, an old piano and the muffled footwork coming from the tablao.
Suspects
Rocío MontoyaFlamenco dancer, 29
Tomás FerrerLuthier, 66
Ignacio SalvatierraFestival director, 52
The real case
The theft of Bronisław Huberman's Stradivarius
New York, United States, 1936
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
On 28 February 1936, while violinist Bronisław Huberman was playing at Carnegie Hall on another instrument, his 1713 Stradivarius was taken from his dressing room. The insurance paid out, the violin vanished and the case went unsolved for almost half a century.
In 1985, a violinist from smaller orchestras confessed on his deathbed to his wife that he had been playing the stolen instrument for decades, disguised under dark varnish. The violin was returned to the insurer in 1987 and is now played by Joshua Bell. A similar case, the 1980 theft of Roman Totenberg's Stradivarius, was not solved until 2015.
The game borrows the centuries-old instrument that disappears from the dressing room during a performance, taken by someone from the same world. Characters, motive and outcome are fiction.
Sources
Case glossary
Words from this case you might not know.
- tablao
- A venue or stage dedicated to live flamenco performances.
- luthier
- A craftsman who builds and repairs stringed instruments such as guitars and violins.