Costa Concordia: the Opera
The next time someone asks if you know a great idea for a contemporary opera, you can say "yes."
On 13 January 2012, the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia, carrying 4,252 people, capsized and sank off the Tuscan island of Giglio.
Captain Francesco Schettino was arrested on 32 charges of manslaughter in connection with causing a shipwreck. He sailed too close to the shore.
This is the bit that hooked me.
[Captain] Schettino was widely ridiculed during the trial for insisting he did not abandon ship but slipped off the Costa Concordia as it rolled over, falling onto a lifeboat which carried him ashore against his wishes.
In a widely-quoted phone call a coast guard official is heard upbraiding Schettino and ordering him to “get back on board, for fuck's sake” — an order the former captain refused to follow.
The violation of the ancient code of the sea which states a captain must be the last man off a sinking ship only accounted for one year of the [16 year] sentence handed down by a three-judge panel in the Tuscan town of Grosseto.
This is what reeled me in.
A further person on the b…