Violins made in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century by Antonio Stradivari are highly prized these days for their exquisite sound - and for their mind-numbing prices, on the rare occasion one of the 650 or so instruments left come on the market. In fact, an anonymous bidder recently paid $9.7 million for a Strad - nearly three times the going rate - as part of a relief auction raising funds for Japan. The violins are often owned by wealthy collectors, then loaned out to musicians (including to our own MSO concertmaster, Frank Almond, who currently plays the Lipinski Strad).
But a recent article in our local rag had me laughing, considering the "alternate" use for a violin case...
A former prison chaplain is on trail for conspiring with a convicted mob hitman to steal a violin hidden in the hitman's former Wisconsin vacation home - a violin the hitman believes is a Stradivarius.
So...why did the hitman not sell the violin before he was incarcerated? Why did he leave it hidden at a vacation home he sold? Could it possibly be that the hitman had hidden the violin because he was using the case for...well, what mobsters traditionally use violin cases for?
Inquiring minds want to know.
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