PUBLICATIONS

As part of the “Year of Ritsos” events, the Greek Festival decided to stage three soliloquies from The Fourth Dimension (Phaedra, When the Stranger comes, Moonlight Sonata); and the poet’s poetical “autobiography” (The monstrous masterpiece), as well as a major concert at the Herod Atticus Theatre with poetry by Yannis Ritsos set to music by Mikis Theodorakis (Epitaph; Romiosyni: The Story of the Greeks; Eighteen Short Songs of the Bitter Motherland). The present edition, which was undertaken by the Benaki Museum in conjunction with the Greek Festival is the Programme for these events.

The publication includes the requisite information concerning these events (dates, performance venues and participants), but also aims to be a book that provides more than transitory current information. With this in mind, it includes texts by the directors (Dimitris Lignadis, Viktor Ardittis and Dimitris Mavrikios); texts by Yannis Ritsos and Mikis Theodorakis about the spirit, significance and manners of writing music for the poems that marked the modern greek consciousness; while also including a rich anthology of critical texts, older or recently written about these particular works by: Louis Aragon, Christos Alexiou, Pantelis Prevelakis and Chryssa Prokopaki. The publication also includes a wealth of photographic material, with a complete record of the performances of these works, edited by Aikaterini Makrynikola.