
Fire Destroys the Gran Teatre del Liceu - Barcelona, Spain
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denben
N 41° 22.842 E 002° 10.412
31T E 430893 N 4581349
As reported by the Moscow Times on 2 February 1994, Barcelona's famous opera house, the Gran Teatre del Liceu, was destroyed by fire.
Waymark Code: WMQKK2
Location: Cataluña, Spain
Date Posted: 02/28/2016
Views: 9
The Gran Teatre del Liceu or simply Liceu in Catalan is an opera house on La Rambla in Barcelona. It opened on 4 April 1847. The building was severely damaged by a first fire on 9 April 1861, but it was rebuilt by the architect Josep Oriol Mestres and opened on 20 April 1862. As related by the Moscow Times, the building was destroyed for the second time by a fire caused by a spark that accidentally fell on the curtain during a routine repair on 31 January 1994. The rebuilt, improved and expanded theater opened on 7 October 1999, with Puccini's Turandot as previewed in 1994 before the fire. Architects for the rebuilding project were Ignasi de Solà-Morales and Xavier Fabré i Lluís Dilmé.
The article reads:
"Fire Destroys Theater
Fire has destroyed the 145-year-old Gran Teatre del Liceu less than a year before Spain's leading musical landmark was to undergo a major restoration, director Josep Caminal said.
A fire department spokesman said the cause of the blaze on Barcelona's Ramblas Boulevard was not known. It broke out shortly after 11 A.M. in the area behind the opera theater's stage.
Caminal told reporters he thought a spark from a blowtorch had started the fire that spread above the new steel fire curtain to the building's partially wooden roof. The fire curtain was installed during a recent partial restoration."
The Moscow Times is an English-language weekly newspaper published in Moscow, with a circulation of 35,000 copies. It is distributed for free at places frequented by English-speaking expatriates such as hotels, cafés, embassies, and airlines. It is also available by subscription, but it is not available at newsstands.
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