Marina Zorzi

Marina Zorzi is 39 and has been the company's soprano for fifteen years. She was born in Padua, the daughter of a piano teacher and an accountant, and was accepted at the Venice conservatory at 18, with a voice the conductor called a family inheritance. She debuted as an extra, moved up to second lady and today sings the leading roles. She says the stage is the only place where she knows exactly who she is.

She lives in a second-floor apartment in an old palazzo divided into dwellings, in San Polo, with tall windows overlooking a narrow canal, an upright piano that goes out of tune every winter with the damp and a collection of fans scattered around the living room. The kitchen is small and almost unused. She eats in restaurants, leaves the lights on and forgets her keys inside the house at least once a week.

She has long black hair in a high bun that comes undone through the day, eyes heavy with mascara and a red lipstick that is never quite in the right place. She wears a gray faux-fur coat over her black rehearsal dress and a burgundy silk scarf at her neck, which she says protects her voice. She is theatrical and proud, answers as if she were on stage and takes offense at direct questions.

About the night of the fire, her account is that of an artist at work: she was rehearsing the third-act aria in her dressing room, because its acoustics are divine. Saturday's opening was the reopening, the first performance after the renovation, and the whole city was coming to hear her. Now, she says, it will hear the firemen. When she smelled smoke, she left through the side door onto the canal, in slippers, and only stopped on the other side of the bridge.

Marina speaks of the theatre as if it were a relative, and when the detective presses for details, she raises her voice and asks him not to address her in that tone. It may be the genuine anguish of someone who has lost her stage. It may be the performance of someone who prefers to be seen on stage rather than seen up close. The detective will have to decide which.