For those who know only a little about Greece and Greek music, the name of 96-year-old Mikis Theodorakis (Mikis Theodorakis) is still reminiscent of the Greeks Zorba and Kerry The moment on the beach on the island. Anthony Quinn with Alan Bates Break in Ecstatic danceFor a composer with classical training, it is often difficult to live up to his image as an unforgettable soundtrack writer. Although his operas, symphonies and songs are performed in some major concert halls in Europe, for many, Theodorakis is still the creator of Zorba’s fascinating bouzouki music and Koss Tower-Gavras (Costa-Gavras) the people of the film Z.
For those who remember the military dictatorship of 1967-74 Greece, He is also a symbol of resistance to that regime. But Theodorakis is more than just a political symbol and film score writer. He is a composer with great melody talent: he has composed more songs than Schubert, and the best songs among them-he has a great deal of love with Lorca, Ceferis, Brendan Behan, Cambane The settings of Liss, Elitis and Lissos-have not been compared. Perhaps his other works will one day occupy a place in the 20th century classical music repertoire, but his songs will undoubtedly remain the most enduring legacy of the man known to his friends. o psilos –huge.
Theodorakis is always eye-catching in Greece. He is a head higher than most of his compatriots, and his political and artistic decisions are almost always controversial.For composers who have received the following training Olivier Messien In 1958, he began a promising career as a “serious” composer. He was invited to write a ballet for Covent Garden, turning to his country’s low-level Buzuki music and making it Used as the basis for his creation, this is a decisive and unexpected step. song.
Like many artists and intellectuals in Greece, Theodorakis was inspired by Marxist ideals. He dreamed of writing music that would attract and elevate working-class listeners, and he succeeded in about ten years.
One of his favorite stories is that he met an old man riding a donkey into a small mountain village. He didn’t know the composer and asked him where he could buy the record of “Theodorakis’ New Works”: Axis estimation“The Odysseus Elytis long poem set by Theodorakis is an ambitious work that combines classical music, ceremonial music, and pop music. A Greek farmer should have heard of it, not to mention the idea of buying it. Happy.
Theodorakis’ decision to combine high art with low art aroused the imagination of the public and ushered in a new era of Greek music. Other Greek composers such as Manos Hadjidakis, Yannis Markopoulos, and Dionysis Savvopoulos also composed exquisite pop songs. Theodorakis is not only the most talented of these composers, but his music is always associated with left-wing careers. His concerts are political events and are often seized by the police. His friend, politician, and anti-fascist Grigoris Lambrakis was inspired by the murders of two men found on the police payroll (these events are dramatized in the movie Z) Theodorakis formed a new left-wing organization, the Lambrakis Youth Movement.
When the 1967 coup ended the short spring of Greek democracy, one of the first decrees passed by military rulers was to completely ban composers’ music. Theodorakis went into hiding, but was soon arrested, imprisoned, and eventually expelled from Greece.
Imprisonment is what the composer is used to: his life is marked by a series of conflicts with authority. Theodorakis is the son of Giorgios Theodorakis, a civil servant in Crete, and a lifelong supporter of the anti-monarchist leader Eleftherios Venizelos. When the Greek-Turkish War broke out in 1919, Theodorakis’s predecessors were serving in a government post in Smyrna. He and his young fiancee Aspasia Poulakis escaped the burning city in a small boat and settled on the nearby island of Chios, where their first child Mikis was born.
The young Theodorakis spent his childhood in a small town in Greece based on where his father was stationed. When the Germans occupied Greece during World War II, he was already composing his first chorus and joined a youth group that was allied with the guerrilla resistance. By 1944, he became a captain of the guerrilla ELAS. It was then that he fell in love with a young medical student and resistance movement member Mirto Altinoglu.
Theodorakis began to study composition at the Athens Conservatory, but continued his underground political activities. He escaped arrest during a street battle in December, when British troops attacked the left-wing unit that led the resistance against the Germans, but was arrested and tortured for the first time in 1945 and 1946, when he was beaten to presumed death.
During the Greek Civil War, he spent several months in prison camps established on the islands of the Aegean Sea, including two periods in the infamous Macronisos concentration camp, prisoners unless they signed a declaration to renounce communism Will be tortured or shot there.
He was released at the end of the war and graduated from the Athens Conservatory in 1950. He began to write ballet and film soundtracks, and composed his first symphony. In 1952, he married Mirto and both received scholarships from the French government: she studied radiology at the Curie Foundation, and he composed music at the Paris Conservatory.
The young couple are destined not to engage in traditional occupations. Their first child, Margarita, was born in 1958, ending Mirto’s career as a scientist. In 1959, despite his success in his youth, Theodorakis found himself dissatisfied with the esoteric world of contemporary classical music and decided to return to his country to actively participate in the cultural and political development of Greece.
He devoted most of his later career to the dream of revitalizing his country’s music. He started by attacking the music institution in Athens, followed by a provocative setting of a poem by Epitaphios. He used bouzoukis and popular nightclub singers to record music, causing a storm in the Greek intellectual world.
Over the next few years, Theodorakis composed an amazing amount of music. International popularity brought by the 1964 film soundtrack Zorba It may be ensured that he was only imprisoned for a short period of time during the dictatorship, after which he was placed under house arrest in a remote village in the Arcadia Mountains. Even there, he managed to smuggle the tapes and information that attacked the regime to the outside world.When Costa Gavras sent him Movie Z (1969), it was confiscated by the authorities, but Theodorakis was able to get a message to the director indicating which of his songs should be used in the original soundtrack.
After his release, Theodorakis and his family went to Paris, and he began touring the world with his band. It was during the years 1970-74 that international audiences became familiar with his works.There continue to be film and TV soundtracks, especially Sidney Lumet’s Serpico (1973), the informant starring Al Pacino.
After the collapse of the dictatorship in 1974, Theodorakis returned to Greece as a hero, but he soon found himself under attack in his country. Although he is a recognized Marxist, he condemned the Soviet army’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. People have seen him support the new conservative prime minister, saying that the people are facing the choice between “Karamanlis” or “tanks.” The Greek Communist Party attacked him as a traitor, and this accusation would reappear when he collaborated with the Turkish composer Zülfü Livaneli and joined the conservative government of Konstantinos Mizotakis in the early 1990s. Theodorakis’ politics may be naive, but they are usually inspired by idealism and believe that he can act as an intermediary and bring peace to his troubled country.
In 1988, 63-year-old Theodorakis began a surprising new chapter in his life. After the premiere of his “Zorba” ballet suite in Verona, he sat looking at the banner hanging over his head with his name written on it, next to the great Italian opera composer. “I want to write three operas,” he decided, “one for Verdi, one for Puccini, and one for Bellini.” For the next eight years, he did just that. His first opera, Medea, Premiered in Bilbao in 1991; Electra in Luxembourg in 1995; and Antigone In 1998 in Thessaloniki (Thessaloniki). The works are long and arduous, and the opera is full of beautiful melody, usually adapted from the composer’s early popular songs.
In 2002, the Greek Cultural Olympiad opened with Theodorakis’s new comedy opera based on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. Pop singer George Dallas played poetry in a light-hearted comedy. Sing as the identity.
In 2005, Theodorakis’ 80th birthday was held in his father’s hometown of Chania, Crete, and the first international seminar was devoted to his work. Two years later, the second seminar attended by scientists and philosophers from all over the world discussed Theodorakis’ “Law of Universal Harmony” theory.
The composer has believed in ideal harmony since his adolescence to reconcile his Christian and Marxist ideals, even though he admitted that it was “my imagination.”
In later years, Theodorakis suffered from health problems, which forced him to cancel most of his conducting activities, but he continued to create occasional new works, including the 2006 Odyssey of the song cycle. He received extensive interviews on Greek television and regularly issued statements to the Greek media on political events, often taking positions that made him unpopular with former supporters.
He supported the police in trying to contain riot The situation that lasted several months in Athens in 2008-09 surprised many leftists, who thought he would be on the side of young anarchists.
On his 85th birthday, concerts celebrating Theodorakis were held in towns across Greece, Munich and Berlin. However, despite his large output of music and an international reputation, he never felt that his classical music received enough attention, especially in his own country. In 1998, he conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Tatiana Papageorgiou acted as a soloist in his work. Concert piano, Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. France is his second hometown, and he was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1996.
His classical works are more famous in Sweden, Poland and Russia than in Greece. In his own country, he suffers from the “high poppy” syndrome-too talented, too idealistic, too famous, even too high. He was criticized for his politics, music and private life. Nevertheless, when he gets up to direct one of his favorite works in Greece, the magic will come back, and someone in the audience will shout “Mikis, you are eternal!”
His health problems included dizziness, which doctors attributed to repeated beatings. He often sits in a wheelchair, attends and holds concerts of his works, encourages many young artists, and continues to advocate for social justice. In 2012, he was sprayed with pepper during a demonstration against the EU’s austerity measures against Greece.
The body of Theodorakis is Myrto, his daughter Margarita, his son Yorgos, five grandchildren and a great-grandson.
