FULL FLORA MIRABILIS (Spyridon Samaras) Athens 2025 Yanni Yannissis, Vassiliki Karayanni, Dionysios Sourbis, Yannis Christopoulos

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: FLORA MIRABILIS  
• Composer: Samaras Spyridon-Filiskos, Restoration of the orchestration, editor: Yannis Samprovalakis  
• Libretto: Ferdinando Fontana  
• Venue & Opera Company: Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera – SNFCC, Athens, Greece  
• Recorded: September 27, 2025
• Type: Concert Live
• Singers: Yanni Yannissis, Vassiliki Karayanni, Dionysios Sourbis, Yannis Christopoulos
• Conductor: Konstantinos Terzakis  
• Orchestra: Orchestra of the GNO  
• Chorus: Chorus of the GNO  
• Chorus Master: Agathangelos Georgakatos  
• Stage Director:   
• Costume Designer:   

Information about the Recording

• Published by: GNO  
• Date Published: 2025  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: nosubs  

• ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

  The Greek National Opera presents on GNO TV an undiscovered gem of the Ionian Music School, Flora mirabilis by the eminent composer Spyridon Samaras. GNO TV audiences will have the rare opportunity to enjoy Flora mirabilis in a concertante version and in a new, restored edition. The digitalisation of the musical material from the archive of the “Mantzaros” Philharmonic Society was made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).

  Following the remarkable success it enjoyed in late 19th-century Europe, Flora mirabilis is reunited with the Greek audience in a valuable restored edition that aspires to reposition the work within the European operatic repertoire. The masterful music of the eclectic and cosmopolitan Corfiot composer Spyridon-Filiskos Samaras — characterised by spontaneous melodic inspiration, imaginative harmonic language, and refined orchestration — combined with his profound knowledge of vocal writing and innate theatrical perception of musical dramaturgy, places him on equal footing with the great European opera composers of his time.

  Unfortunately, the opera’s full score was destroyed, along with a large part of the archive of the Italian publishing house Casa Musicale Sonzogno, in 1943 during the Allied bombing of Milan. Only the edition of the reduction for voices and piano survived, having been widely circulated in numerous copies and preserved in libraries and private collections. This edition served as the basis for the Greek National Opera’s revival of the work in April 1979, featuring a reorchestration by the legendary maestro Odysseas Dimitriadis, who also conducted the performances.

  However, approximately a decade ago, a significant portion of the original orchestral material was discovered in the musical archive of the “Mantzaros” Philharmonic Society in Corfu, and in 2016 an exclusive copy was entrusted to the Greek National Opera. This newly recovered material, combined with the original orchestration of two dance excerpts that had long been preserved in the GNO Music Library, was processed by musicologist and clarinetist Yannis Samprovalakis, Associate Professor at the Ionian University (Hellenic Music Centre). Samprovalakis undertook the completion and restoration of the opera’s original orchestration, as well as the editorial supervision of the new edition.

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  Flora mirabilis (“The Wondrous Flower”) is an opera in three acts composed by Spyros Samaras to an Italian-language libretto by Ferdinando Fontana. Described in the libretto as a Legenda (“Legend”), the opera is an allegorical fairy tale set in medieval Sweden. It premiered at the Teatro Carcano in Milan on 16 May 1886 and was performed again the following year at La Scala. Flora mirabilis was Samara’s first opera to be performed outside his native Greece and proved to be his greatest success, playing in multiple opera houses in Italy and abroad.
  Background
  A 20th-century description of Flora mirabilis in Gelli’s Dizionario dell’Opera points out that despite having a Greek composer trained in France and a story set in medieval Sweden, the opera adhered quite strictly to the characteristic elements of late 19th-century Italian opera—folkloric dances, large choruses, and lengthy orchestral passages used to set both the geographical and the psychological atmosphere.

  Flora mirabilis was Samaras’s first collaboration with the Italian librettist Ferdinando Fontana who became a lifelong admirer of his music and went on to provide the libretti for Samaras’s operas Medgè (1888) and Lionella (1891). George Leotsakos and other authors have compared the musical idiom and proto-verismo displayed in Flora to that of Puccini whose first two operas, Le Villi and Edgar, also had libretti by Fontana. Like Flora, Le Villi and Edgar were based on northern European medieval legends, a particular passion of Fontana’s.

  The premiere of Flora mirabilis at the Teatro Carcano in May 1886 proved to be a great success with both the composer and the librettist brought to the stage for multiple curtain calls. The lead roles of Lidia and Valdo were sung by Ernestina Bendazzi-Secchi and her future husband Alfonso Garulli. Flora mirabilis was performed the following year at La Scala conducted by Franco Faccio and ran for 11 performances with Garulli reprising the role of Valdo and Emma Calvé as Lidia. The opera was subsequently performed in multiple Italian opera houses as well as in Cologne and Vienna. The opera’s premiere in Samaras’ native Greece took place in Corfu on 5 February 1889. It was also performed in Athens later that year during the celebrations for the wedding of Crown Prince Constantine, receiving a total of 16 performances there.

  The full score to Flora mirabilis was lost in 1943 when Samaras’s publisher Casa Sonzogno was hit during the Allied bombing of Milan.[3] However, copies of the piano/vocal score are extant as are some orchestral fragments. Although largely forgotten in modern times, the opera was revived in 1979 in a production by the Greek National Opera at the Olympia Theatre in Athens. Its most famous melody, “Dance of the Flowers” was performed on its own at a concert conducted by Samaras himself for the 1896 Olympics in Athens and was performed again in 2011 by the Philharmonic Society of Corfu as part of the commemorations for the 150th anniversary of Samaras’s birth.
  Quoted from Wikipedia

   

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