2023-05-03 19:00:24
You have to climb on the roof of the elegant and fine ship of metal and glass that Renzo Piano designed for the Cultural Center of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, which since 2017 has housed the National Opera of Greece, to see the sea and its ‘envelop in the wind. The same one who pushed Jason and his Argonauts to the shores of Colchis (current Georgia) where he conquered the Golden Fleece with the help of the magician Medea, whom he married after bringing her back to Greece, and whose he will have two children. But we are no longer there, and the Medea by Luigi Cherubini, who opens the festivities linked to the centenary of the birth of Maria Callas (1923-1977), is already plotting his revenge since the Greek hero repudiated her and is preparing to marry Glauce, the daughter of the King of Corinth, Creonte.
The opera, created in French in 1797, before being adapted into German, from which the Italian version was taken, remained attached to the legend of the great Greek singer, born in New York on December 2, 1923. A role that the “Divina” definitely marked with her vocal and dramaturgical imprint although she sang it on stage less than ten years (from 1953 to 1962), and of which major recordings remain. Maria Kalogeropoulou was almost thirty years old when she played Medea for the first time, in Italy, at the Maggio Musicale in Florence and then at La Scala in Milan (1953). Will follow Venice (1954) and Rome (1955).
Unusual tragic strength
This tragedian at heart offers the figure of infanticide, adapted from Euripides’ tragedy, an unusual tragic force, resuscitating an opera long since forgotten. Three years later, the “Divina” became “the most elegant woman in the world” when the Dallas Opera offered him a new production in 1958 (which would be revived in London the following year). The singer accepts, on condition that she chooses her partners. If the cast has only one Greek, the bass Nicola Zaccaria, alongside the great Canadian tenor Jon Vickers and the young Spanish mezzo Teresa Berganza, the scenic team brings together the cream of Greek artists: in the staging, the actor and theater man Alexis Minotis, sets and costumes, painter Yannis Tsarouchis.
It is with this production that Callas will perform his first Medea on the land of his ancestors. The director of the National Opera of Greece, Kostis Bastias, who had greatly supported the debut of a Maria Kalogeropoulou still a student, wants to inaugurate with her the first opera performances ever given at the ancient theater of Epidaurus.
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