A Frightened Desdemona

Manuel Garcia had a beautiful voice—and a furious temper. His daughter Maria, who would later become one of the world’s most celebrated prima donnas, inherited some of that fire, and it didn’t make for a peaceful household.

When Monsieur Malibran offered to marry Maria, Garcia exploded and refused to approve the engagement. The home was in uproar. Yet that very night, father and daughter still had to go onstage together in Othello: Garcia as the Moor, Maria as Desdemona.

In the opera, Othello must stab Desdemona. At that moment Maria saw her father approach, raising not the harmless stage dagger—cardboard covered in silver paper—but a real dagger he had recently bought.

Terrified that this was revenge for defying him, she screamed: “Father, father, for God’s sake do not kill me!”

Her fear was needless. In the rush, Garcia couldn’t find the pasteboard prop dagger among the stage properties, and had substituted his own. Maria later married Malibran anyway—and under the name Malibran she went on to her remarkable triumphs.