“Light! Oh, Where Is the Light?”

One of the greatest and noblest figures in the history of India, “the Bard of Bengal”, Rabindranath Tagore, was active as a poet, prose writer, playwright, composer, philosopher and painter while also having the honour of being the first non-European who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Furthermore, he stood out for his social reform action in the Indian independence movement and was a tireless traveller who visited more than 30 countries, including Greece in a historic visit in 1926.

Apart from the over 2,000 songs he composed himself, his poetry has been a source of inspiration for many composers the world over, including the Greek composer Giannis Konstantinidis, who composed the song cycle Songs of Anticipation, and many more, such as the Italians Alfredo Casella and Franco Alfano, the Polish Karol Szymanowski, the American John Alden Carpenter, the Russian Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov and the French André Caplet, who all wrote songs based on Tagore’s poetry, translated into English, Italian, Russian and German.

A selection from this special body of works will be presented on the GNO Alternative Stage by an experienced team of acclaimed recitalists, consisting of flautist Natalia Geraki, pianist Dimitris Yakas and vocalists Elena Marangou and Lydía Zervanos.