Prompted by his great love for modern Greek poetry but also the deep concern regarding the recent crisis in Greece, Moni Ovadia returns to one of his older projects, Progetto Odissea, which poses vital questions about the origins of European culture, and presents a bilingual recital, in Greek and Italian, in the form of an oratorio entitled Cantata Greca with the poems of Yiannis Ritsos Delphi and Moonlight Sonata. On Tuesday 3rd of March 2015, at 21:00, at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation.

 

Delphi and Moonlight Sonata are included in the poets collection, The Fourth Dimension, and belong to the most mature and complete period of Yiannis Ritsos vast and fertile poetic production.

 

In the first of the above mentioned works, the poet presents the emotions, the fears and the weaknesses of an old caretaker in the ruins of Delphi who, exhausted by the routine of his work, can feel the beauty of this legendary past fading away, the statues and the buildings lost forever to consumerist indifference and the bitterness of a touristic approach, whilst in the second work we meet an educated lady from a good family whose dreams and ambitions have been thwarted and who talks in depth of the merciless effect of time, deterioration, memories, the past and the objects which slowly crumble and disappear, the need to move on and the failure to be able to do so.

Both characters are engaged with a silent figure and it is exactly this interaction which is the connecting point between the two poems.

 

The poem Delphi is turned into a musical work thanks to the composition of the great Piero Milesi who incorporates the country itself and musical fragments of Greek tradition into a dynamic and effectively minimalistic piece, where voice and the spoken word, as much in Italian as in Greek, become integral parts of the composition. In Moonlight Sonata Beethovens music performed live on stage by Vincenzo Pasquariello at the piano, rightfully accompanies Ritsos masterful texts.

 

Moni Ovadia was born in 1946 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, to a Sephardim family. After his graduation in Political Science he began his artistic career as a researcher, a singer and an interpreter of folk and ethnic music from all countries.

 

In 1984 he began his involvement with the theatre, initially in collaboration with artist from the international scene such as Bolek Polivka, Tadeusz Kantor and Franco Parenti and later as a producer, director, actor and agent of a musical theatre of unique identity, where previous experiences were combined with the talent of an entertainer, an orator and a humorist.

 

The thread which runs throughout his themes and the vast collection of his books and discs is one of a complex and multi-faceted tradition of the cultural and actual wanderings which characterize the Jewish people, of whom he believes he is a son and a representative: it is this dive into different languages and sounds which bequeathed unto him a culture which dictatorships and totalitarian ideologies of the 1900s would want to wipe out, a tradition which he keeps up, as depositary, for the future.

 

As a writer for major newspapers, Moni Ovadia is also known for his fight for human rights and for peace. Prompted by the recent financial and sociopolitical crisis in Greece, which brings to the surface once again vital questions regarding the origins of European culture, the artist returns with Progetto Odissea, producing a bilingual recital in the form of an oratorio (Greek / Italian) with 440 lines from Nikos Kazantzakis Odyssey and the Cantata greca which includes the poems of Yiannis Ritsos: Delphi and Moonlight Sonata.

 

 

 

 

Video concept: Elisa Savi, Tommaso Lagattolla

3D processing: Vincenzo Caivano

Video creation: Andrea Bocca / logout studio Torino

 

 

Hall: Theatre

Duration: 80 (with an intermission)

Ticket price: 3, General admission