Reviews
The Murderess Sings at the Greek National Opera
Alexandros Papadiamantis’s novella, The Murderess enjoys seminal status in Greece where it has stood as a challenge to conventional socio-political thinking and the roles of church and state since its publication in 1903. Adapted by Giorgos Koumendakis as a gripping two-act opera, it was premiered by Greek National Opera in 2014. This December 3 performance at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, a short ride from central Athens, was GNO’s third re-staging of the work. The stunning, Renzo Piano-designed building has been the company’s home since 2017 when Koumendakis himself took over as artistic director, demonstrating in just a short time a healthy appetite for risk while developing new ways to build community engagement.
A stark and sometimes chilling tale, The Murderess revolves around Hadoula, an old woman living in a close-knit community on the island of Skiathos in the late 19th century. At the time, young men were emigrating in droves leaving poor families struggling to provide dowries for the resulting surplus of daughters. When one of her daughters has a baby girl, Hadoula—known simply as “Frangoyannoù,” or the widow of Yannis Frangos—crosses a line when she kills her newborn granddaughter out of a misguided but overwhelming sense of pity for mother and child. She goes on to kill two other young girls (three in the novel) by throwing them into a well, before, driven half mad with guilt and on the run from the police, she is drowned herself attempting to reach the sanctuary of a monastery. As Papadiamantis puts it, she meets death “midway between divine and human justice.”
An empathetic narrator
What is most remarkable, as depicted in both the novel and in Yannis Svolos’s tersely atmospheric libretto, is the writer’s sense of empathy with Frangoyannoù and a refusal to condemn this strong, resourceful, ruthlessly cunning woman whose life has been one long struggle, first with her parents and then with her singularly useless husband. Her status in the community as a wise herbalist, able to both prevent and “cure” pregnancy, has parallels in contemporary writers from the Brothers Grimm to Thomas Hardy.
Located at the crossroads between Asia Minor and Greece, Skiathos is even now a remote place, one steeped in tradition. Koumendakis honors both past and present with a score that combines spiky modernist elements with the kinds of diatonic harmonies and melismatic melodies to be found in Greek Orthodox chant and the folk music of Asia Minor. If you want a handle, think John Tavener, Bartók, or the Stravinsky of Les Noces. Vocal lines curl and flutter, most powerfully when mothers lament their dead children (at one point there is even a quote from Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder). There’s an onstage chamber ensemble with key roles for accordion, saxophone, and percussion, and also an unaccompanied female quartet whose haunting music bears a resemblance to the famous Bulgarian women's choir whose album Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares won a Grammy back in 1989.
Alexandros Efklidis’s sure-footed production captures well the novel’s contrasting sense of community and isolation through skillful positioning of the large cast, which includes both adult and children’s choruses. Wordless appearances of Frangoyannoù as a young bride, seemingly sleepwalking her way to the altar, and as a ghostly, weed-encrusted figure dredged up from the sea emphasize the remorseless cycle of birth, marriage, and death. Petros Touloudis’s handsome, rotating set suggests both a gigantic well and a gallows, and the final image of a bride suspended in midair as she’s wrapped in her winding sheet is a powerful one. Period costumes, by Touloudis and Ioanna Tsami are scrupulously observed.
The cast
In the lead role, Canadian-Greek mezzo-soprano Mary-Ellen Nesi is magnificent. With minimal gestures and an implacable stare, she conveys Frangoyannoù’s combination of grim determination and inner conflict. Her dark but steely tone carries effortlessly over Koumendakis’s substantial orchestrations and she’s memorable in solos, such as her prayer for the failed olive harvest and her fraught intoning of the Kyrie Eleison.
Giorgos Koumendakis's The Murderess at the Greek National Opera
Among the rest of the 17-named soloists are standout performances from Maria Konstanta as Frangoyannoù’s flinty unmarried daughter Amersa, Marilena Striftobola as her youngest daughter Kriniò, and especially from Anna Stylianaki as Maroussò, the woman who briefly shelters the murderess as repayment for having once been “helped” out of an unwanted pregnancy. Vassilis Christopoulos conducts the diffuse forces with considerable expertise and the children deserve special praise for tackling this by no means straightforward music with notable confidence.
With its large forces, economics suggest The Murderess is unlikely to be taken up by many other companies. However, the production may well appear online at some point, in which case it can be wholeheartedly recommended. Koumendakis and Greek National Opera have created a formidable and significant piece of contemporary music theater.
The Alternative Stage
GNO’s new home has provided it with a second auditorium for its ambitious “Alternative Stage,” an annual program of exclusively contemporary work. The evening following The Murderess featured a concert performance of Mikis Theodorakis’s song cycle Asikiko Poulaki, a poetic tribute to the composer’s mother and a good example of the company’s extensive range. Written in 1995, the work was rearranged and adapted for GNO by Andreas Katsigiannis at the composer’s own suggestion.
Theodorakis is a modern Greek hero, a freedom fighter who was imprisoned for his beliefs. As a musician, his ability to tap into Greek dance rhythms and, more widely, the traditional music of Asia Minor, engendered an attractive blend of folk music and more sophisticated classical forms. Celebrating the 2021 Bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, and in commemoration of Theodorakis who died earlier this year, Asikiko Poulaki was both a poignant and a festive choice.
Idiomatically sung by Yannis Dionisou, the performance was accompanied by Estoudiantina Neas Ionias, an outstanding ensemble dedicated to reviving traditional Byzantine folk music. As such, the 10-strong line-up included accordion, various sized bouzoukis, and the santouri, a stringed instrument struck like a cimbalom. Theodorakis’s complex rhythms were dispatched with pinpoint accuracy and the music was performed with such generosity of spirit, it was hard to resist the temptation to get up and dance.
Top photo: Mezzo-soprano Mary-Ellen Nesi as the Murderess, approaching the cradle
Photos by A. Simopoulos
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