One day in the spring of 1871, a Polish musician named Maximilian Prihoda, who was to perform at the Teatro della Scala in Milan, passed by to visit his relatives who had settled years earlier in Dorga, in the Seriana Valley.
He was so struck by the beauty of the places, especially the Presolana Pass, that he decided to return there later with his wife Anna Stereat, a painter.
The two often strolled to the Belvedere, a cliff located at the end of a path through the woods.The locals became accustomed to the foreign couple and began to call them “the newlyweds.”
For no apparent reason, one day at the end of September, after a heavy thunderstorm, the two young people went to the cliff; after Anna painted her husband’s portrait and he composed a short melody dedicated to his wife, they threw themselves into the void embracing each other, and so were found the next day at the base of the cliff.
Since then, that place has been named “Bride and Groom’s Leap” and is a destination for lovers from all over who come here to throw flowers as a wish for their love.
Curiosity:
It seems that Anna Stereat’s painting was found by chance in Bombay, India, at the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, and the score was recently rediscovered in the library of the Conservatorio Gaetano Donizetti in Bergamo.