Banff-Calgary opera story of rum-runner's bride who went to gallows

April 12, 2001
Source: National Post
Original story - link verified on April 12, 2001
By Robert Remington

One of the last women hanged in Canada -- an Italian immigrant who may have gone to the gallows for a murder she did not commit -- will be immortalized in a new opera. Co-produced by Calgary Opera and the Banff Centre for the Arts, it will tell the story of Filumena Constanzo, whose life is the stuff of operatic tragedy. Married at 15 against her will to a Canadian rum-runner, she is believed to have taken the blame for murdering a policeman to save the life of a man who may have been her lover, only to die alongside him.

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