Rousilvo

Rousilvo is the old name for the village of Xanthogeia, 24 km west of Edessa in the North of Greece. When the Greek Civil War (1946–49) came to an end, most of the village women were left alone, their menfolk dead or exiled. After decades of social exclusion, the village was finally left abandoned in 1986.

The composer Dine Doneff—who also goes by the name of Kostas Theodorou—is a unique figure on the contemporary Balkan music scene. “Rousilvo” is the result of a lengthy compositional process and the gathering together of experiences both personal and collective. Recorded in 2004, it was released as a CD in 2010 by Panoptikon of Thessaloniki.

The six musicians taking art in this performance—Takis Farazis, Kyriakos Tapakis, Dimos Dimitriadis, Pantelis Stoikos, Andonis Andreou and Kostas Anastasiadis—are the same hand-picked collaborators who played on the original recording. The vocals are taken care of by Slava Pop’va (Evdoxia Georgiou), who is also the work’s protagonist, Lizeta Kalimeri and Martha Mavroidi. Giannis Thomas wrote the texts and Foteini Potamia signed off on coordination and visual interventions. The direction is by Tome Rapovina, who also produced the audio-visual material.

“Rousilvo” (2010) is the second part of a trilogy which began with “Nostos” [Homecoming] in 1999. The opera¬—which can be staged as a self-standing work as well as part of a trilogy—is narrational in form (with an entry, a main body and an exit) and consists of musical compositions, soundscapes and fragmentary audio-documents in which the protagonists tell their stories. Taking its inspiration from the dramatic tale of a recently abandoned village on Greece’s northern borders, this contemporary Balkan folk opera focuses on how resistant modern nation-states are to difference, to incorporating populations that speak other tongues, to respecting the cultural heritage of the Other. This work is dedicated to the poetry that’s vanishing from our world.