Prompters

Alternative Stage Founding Donor

Major Sponsor of the Greek National Opera

A co-production

Under the auspices of the Italian Cultural Institute of Athens

The concert Prompters, conceived, arranged, and conducted by Alexandros Gkonis, blends music by François Couperin and Claudio Monteverdi with Eugenio Montale’s poetry and a new score composed by Alexandros Gkonis himself, in a tribute to the musicality of speech and the prosody of music.

The first part of the concert bridges French Baroque vocal chamber music with 20th-century poetry.  The third motet from composer François Couperin’s Leçons de Ténèbres (Readings of Darkness) and Italian Nobel laureate Eugenio Montale’s poem “All' Amico Pea” (To my friend Pea) are combined into a single work. Blending these two diverse narratives into a single musical piece, one maestro, two singers, one actress, and a string quartet carve out a path for unprecedented coexistence and conversation.

The second part of the concert includes ten pentatonic madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi and five additional poems by Montale (translated into Greek by Nikos Aliferis). Fifteen brief and self-luminous pieces, each following the previous, take audiences on a journey from rich Baroque sounds to a more elegant and delicate musical whisper, which harmoniously blends with the recitation.

“With this concert, we honour the people who, through their work, have ensured we have an everlasting companion. We sing the music in the same way we whistle it while going down the stairs; we articulate speech in the same way we hum it while walking in the street; and we want to remain faithful to this demanding carefreeness,” notes Alexandros Gkonis.