Article on Biachi, Sulzer, and Wilson court cases

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Published

Last Updated:
11 March 2015

Performance Date(s) and Time(s)

20 Feb 1864

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Citations

1)
Article: New York Clipper, 20 February 1864, 355.

“The opera people are nearly all the time in trouble of some sort or other; if they are not on the sick list, on a bender, or like that, they are having some little family strife, or a turn up with chambermaids. One of these latter contretemps or faux passes was ventilated last week. It appears that in November last, while Signor Biachi was boarding at the house of Dr. Resenburger, 14th street near the Academy of Music, some evil-disposed person did take from Biachi’s bureau a $100 bill. Annie Wilson, chambermaid, was charged with the theft, which she indignantly denied. Then Signorita Sulzer mysteriously appears upon the scene, and backs up Biachi. Then Annie Wilson pitches into Sulzer and gives her the face ache by saying that she knows as much about Biachi’s room as anybody. This was rough. Oh! but it made Sulzer flare up; she just hauled off, and delivered her right, flush in the frontispiece of ye gentle Annie. The lovely Sulzer followed up her advantage by emptying a dish of melted fat upon the chambermaid (may be [sic] they had been cooking dough nuts [sic]). Sulzer is also charged with calling Annie a thief. She must have been in an awful tantrum to carry on so. All this time we lose sight of Biachi; guess he was afraid of the melted fat. Next day the two singers were arrested and bound over to answer, and while this binding over was going on, the Doctor also put his foot in it, and he, too, called Annie Wilson a thief. It is truly said that the last shall be first, so the Doctor, who cried thief, last, was tried first, but the jury were unable to agree, and were discharged. Biachi was next called up for trial, but after hearing witnesses, speeches, etc., the jury failed to agree, and they, too, were discharged. There was no harmony in their composition, at all. Signorita Sulzer’s case was up on the 12th, but the lady didn’t care to face the Court and gentlemen of the jury, and she became ‘indisposed,’ and the case was laid over till the 15th. Biachi is the man who plays the devil in ‘Faust,’ and Sulzer is the lady who does Siebel, in the same opera. Annie Wilson does the chambermaids in respectable families. Dr. Resenburgh physics people and so forth.”