Martha: A story from Missolonghi Martha: A story from Missolonghi
Alternative Stage
Martha: A story from Missolonghi
SEASON 2020/21 - A musicopoetic work by Nikos Xydakis and Dionysis Kapsalis
7, 8 May 2021
Δημιουργική Ομάδα

Libretto:
Dionysis Kapsalis

Video – Visual material: 
Vassilis Kehagias

Πρωταγωνιστές Παράστασης

Cast:
Irini Derebei
Tassis Christoyannis
Pleiades vocal group 

POLIS Ensemble

 

Neoklis Neophytides (piano, voice)
Sofia Efklidou (violoncello)

 

 
Alternative Stage
Opera

Martha: A story from Missolonghi

A musicopoetic work by Nikos Xydakis and Dionysis Kapsalis

* Due to the restrictive measures against the pandemic, the performance dates refer to when the production will be recorded so as to be streamed on GNO TV. 

Greek National Opera Alternative Stage
Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center

World premiere / Commissioned by the GNO Alternative Stage

Starts at 20.30  |   

As part of the tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution

ΙΣΝ LOGO 2021

This production, part of a tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org].

The figure of Martha, the beleaguered mother from the fragments of Dionysios Solomos’ epic, unfinished poem The Free Besieged, lies at the centre of this musico-poetic synthesis that ventures to render one of the most prominent episodes of the Greek War of Independence: the Third Siege and Exodus of Missolonghi in the spring of 1826 – seen, this time, from the viewpoint of the besieged women.

Based on two sources that balance the popular and the learned in creative ways (the invaluable Memoirs of the revolutionary warrior and historian Nikolaos Kasomoulis, to whom we owe a first-hand account of the siege, and the lacerating poetic transubstantiation of the historical events by the genius of Solomos, the national poet of Greece), this creative partnership of composer Nikos Xydakis, well-known for his skilful bridging of folk and oriental elements with Western-style songwriting, and award-winning poet Dionysis Kapsalis puts on stage the historical figures of the Poet (Solomos) and the Narrator (Kasomoulis) as carriers of their own words in an attempt to delineate the transcendent, ethical grandeur of the insurgent, self-sacrificing women of Missolonghi through an idiom that combines the means of poetry, music and narration in diverse ways.