FULL Capodistrias: Monodrama of a Secret Life (Tsoupakis) Athens 2021
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Capodistrias: Monodrama of a Secret Life
- Composer: Tsoupakis Calliope
- Libretto: Calliope Tsoupakis Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: GNO Alternative Stage at the SNFCC, Athens, Greece
- Recorded: 2021
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Timos Sirlantzis, Marilena Germanou
- Conductor: Nicolas Vassiliou
- Orchestra: Instrumental ensemble
- Stage Director: Themelis Glynatsis Set & costume designer: Video designers: Marios Gampierakis, Chrysoula Korovesi Lighting designer:
- Stage Designer: Alexia Theodorakis
- Costume Designer: Alexia Theodorakis
- Lighting Designer: Stella Kaltsou
Information about the Recording
- Published by: nationalopera.gr
- Date Published: 2021
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: nationalopera.gr FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
The unfulfilled love of the first governor of the new Greek state Ioannis Kapodistrias and Roxandra Stourtza, lady in honor of the wife of Tsar Alexander I, is the subject of the new monodrama of Kalliopi Tsoupaki, an important Greek composer with the recent Dutch synthetic distinction Componist des Vaderlands.
In one of the most romantic pages of the National Uprising, the fervent politician and diplomat Kapodistrias and the noble and educated Sturzha, descendants of a wealthy Moldavian family, met in the Russian imperial court in 1809 and shared a long-standing bond. in combination with Kapodistrias’s patriotic self-sacrifice in the Greek cause, they did not allow their love to manifest. Their relationship seems to have flourished with a focus on music: in addition to their joint political action around the Philomuso – as well as the Philhellenic – Society of Vienna, Stourtza is said to have played the piano with Kapodistrias during their private moments.
Based on their extensive correspondence as well as Roxandra Stourtza’s notebooks, the composer narrates their moving story in non-narrative terms and sensitively “directs” a person-centered immersion in the common interior of two people who lived their lives separately – afterwards, thanks to the empathic power of a music full of sensuality and repressed passion.