Roman Totenburg's Stolen Stradivarius Recovered

Roman Totenberg’s Stolen Stradivarius Is Found After 35 Years

By MICHAEL COOPER

Roman Totenberg’s rare Stradivarius violin, stolen after a performance in 1980, was returned to the authorities this June.

The label inside the violin said “Stradivarius,” but plenty of fakes claim that, too. So after a California woman asked Phillip Injeian, a violinmaker and dealer, to appraise the instrument, he met her at a Manhattan hotel in late June and examined every inch of it, from its nicks to the somewhat pointy curve of its F-holes to its distinctive wood grain, before delivering his verdict.

“I told her, ‘I have good news and bad news,’ ” Mr. Injeian said in an interview Thursday. “I said: ‘The good news is that it’s a Stradivarius. The bad news is that it’s a stolen Stradivarius. And this is one that has been gone for 35 years.’ ”

The Stradivarius — which was made in 1734 by Antonio Stradivari and is known as the Ames Stradivarius — disappeared after it was stolen in 1980 from the violin virtuoso Roman Totenberg. So as soon as Mr. Injeian recognized it, he called in law enforcement officials, setting off a train of events that ended on Thursday afternoon with the return of the long-lost violin to Mr. Totenberg’s three daughters: Amy, Jill and Nina Totenberg.