"The first few weeks of 1903 found the opera family on course. Then on 25 February during his return with Elvira and Tonio from a dinner with Alfredo Caselli in Lucca, Puccini's De Dion Bouton left the road at a sharp bend, plunged down an embankment and overturned. Fortunately a doctor who lived nearby heard the crash and took the injured into his house --the chauffeur Barsuglia with a fractured thigh, Puccini with a broken shinbone and multiple contusions, Elvira and Tonio in a state of shock but otherwise unhurt. Next day Barsuglia was rushed to a hospital in Lucca, while his passengers were transported by coach and motor boat to Torre del Lago, where Puccini was laid up for the next four months, tended by Elvira, her sister Ida Razzi, and the widowed Nitteti."
"The first few weeks of 1903 found the opera family on course. Then on 25 February during his return with Elvira and Tonio from a dinner with Alfredo Caselli in Lucca, Puccini's De Dion Bouton left the road at a sharp bend, plunged down an embankment and overturned. Fortunately a doctor who lived nearby heard the crash and took the injured into his house --the chauffeur Barsuglia with a fractured thigh, Puccini with a broken shinbone and multiple contusions, Elvira and Tonio in a state of shock but otherwise unhurt. Next day Barsuglia was rushed to a hospital in Lucca, while his passengers were transported by coach and motor boat to Torre del Lago, where Puccini was laid up for the next four months, tended by Elvira, her sister Ida Razzi, and the widowed Nitteti."
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