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Lecture at the Department of Greek and Latin languages and cultures, University of Amsterdam, P.C. Hoofthuis, Spuistraat 134, room 1.05, 25 April 2014
The Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu following a long and arduous search to adapt an epic story, an epochal drama in the line of Dostoyevsky, into an opera he eventually found the tragic theme in Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel O Χριστός Ξανασταυρώνεται (Christ Recrucified, 1948). Martinu obtained the author’s approval to arrange a libretto based on the novel and composed The Greek Passion, his fourteenth and final opera. Or, to be more precise, his last two operas: Accordingly, The Greek Passion exists in two complete, essentially differing versions. The first (“London”) version was composed from 1954 to 1957. The second (“Zurich”) version originated between the autumn of 1957 and January 1959.
This talk will explore the composer’s encounter to compress Kazantzakis’s four-hundred page novel into the libretto. It will consider on the assimilation of Greek elements in both the text and music of the opera and how the music supports the meaning of the text.