Teatro del Giglio

This guide to Teatro del Giglio in Lucca returns to the night of September 17, 1831, when French tenor Gilbert Duprez stepped onto this stage to sing Arnold in Rossini's Guillaume Tell. It follows the vocal convention every tenor before him had followed for the opera's brutal high C, and the choice Duprez made instead, in front of an audience with no idea what they were about to hear. The guide also traces the theater's origins as a gift to a Bourbon duchess, named for the lily on her coat of arms.