"THE GREAT PROVOCATEUR" by Dimitris Papadimitriou
HELLENIC PROJECT: Contemporary Music and Poetry Cycle
Dates
Tickets
Venue
Time & Date
Information
Tickets
Onassis Stegi Friends presale: from 21 FEB 2019, 12:00
General presale: from 28 FEB 2019, 12:00
Full price: 7, 12 €
Reduced, Friend & Groups 5-9 people: 10 €
Groups 10+ people: 9 €
Νeighbourhood residents: 7 €
People with disabilities & Unemployed: 5 € | Companions: 7, 10 €
Group ticket reservations at groupsales@onassis.org
Introduction
Inspired by world poetry down the ages and focusing on verse that questions, Dimitris Papadimitriou selected poems and set them to music in this, the first part of his new project, "THE GREAT PROVOCATEUR".
Setting out in search of poetry that isn’t scared to ask provocative questions, Papadimitriou has composed a new cycle of songs entitled "THE GREAT PROVOCATEUR", which he will be presenting to us on World Poetry Day.
This first of the three parts of his cycle setting poetry to music draws freely and without distinction from different eras, the thread running through the whole being the rebellious nature of poetry and the seeds of doubt it plants.
The songs, which will be performed by three young singers and an ensemble of nine instrumentalists, form part of Hellenic Plan's Contemporary Music and Poetry Cycle. Hellenic Plan commissions new works with a view to creating a new kind of song cycle presenting a fresh take on world poetry.
Dimitris Papadimitriou’s grounding in poetry sends the composer on new creative adventures whose "heretical" proposals challenge us to embark on a new musical voyage of discovery.
"A Song Cycle dedicated to intellectual, moral and aesthetic liberty—and, why not, to libertinism!
Which is say it's dedicated to the poetically rebellious, the poem as act of disobedience. To provocation, in other words.
Dedicated, too, to the uncompromising hunt for an immaculate, unsullied, absolute truth which automatically consigns its standard-bearers to the fringes of society and to an unseen Inquisition. Because there's nothing more deathly anti-social than large doses of uncompromising truth.
Here, we present the first of three parts; the other two, God willing, will be with us in the near future. Aristophanes, Villon, Embirikos, Cavafy, Koropoulis, Lapathiotis, Leontaris, Brecht, John Donne, Palamas, Rilke, Sachlikis are just some of the protagonists in this cycle of heretical poetic forms.
The cycle's title has a purposefully 'heretical’ ring to it which, by honouring sarcastically also, by necessity, scorns honorifically (!) All the above, needless to say, should be taken in a spirit of jest...which, as some of us know, would have gone down well with someone who knew a lot about songs and heresy, our very own Manos Hadjidakis!
Literary consultant, Giorgos Koropoulis"
– Dimitris Papadimitriou
Photo: Andreas Simopoulos