The evil eye of Jacques Offenbach. Do you believe in evil eye ?

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"OFFENBACH. On hearing his name, hold two fingers of the right hand close together, to preserve yourself from the evil eye. This looks very fashionable and Parisian." wrote Gustave Flaubert in his Dictionary of Accepted Ideas. Upraising the index and the small finger of the right hand is the sign made in Italy against the jettatori -- persons with an evil eye -- to protect from the bad luck they bring with them. Like Lord Byron, Offenbach (1819-1880), composer of many fun operettas, was believed to have this involuntary power. So involuntary that when his villa burnt totally in Normandy in 1862, a sarcastic journalist said that it was because he looked at himself in a mirror . A few months later, a young ballerina, Emma Livry, had her skirts caught on a gaslight during a rehearsal and died of her wounds in 1863. She was famous for a previous role in an Offenbach's ballet, and indeed Offenbach was accused of this bad luck... You should write a book only with the anecdotes about the evil eye of Offenbach. A good fantastic novel of Theophile Gautier, Jettatura (1856), was inspired by the composer. In Offenbach's theater, men were doing obviously the jettatore sign when they crossed him and women were wearing red coral amulets and bracelets to protect themselves against the evil eye of their director. Do you believe in evil eye ?