OUR Dimitris Mitropoulos he never consulted the notes, even in rehearsals. He wrote his first work at the age of 15. He has risen to the podium more than 2500 times, conducted 45 orchestras in Europe and America. He was the first Greek to abandon the tonal system. He signed only one opera, which will only be performed for the third time in 102 years, a few days later, in Olympic Theater. During his 37-year career, he received more than 20 important awards and medals. He was the first to write, in 1926, music to the verses of Konstantinos Cavafy, even asking Alexandrinos himself to take over the translation into French. (“10 Inventions” will also be displayed among his other works at Olympia on October 22.)

Myth and personality

Although he gave up composing early – around the third decade of his life – his work has 48 titles. Impressive figures in themselves are able to “build” the legend of Mitropoulos, but do not reveal the side of his charismatic personality. They don’t praise courage in composition even at a young age, they don’t talk about his complete command of his expressive means, they don’t talk about his erudition, about “undressing discipline, doubts and humility”, the virtues with which he approached music, as he confessed to his friend George Seferis. The numbers do not reveal how he was composed from the very beginning with the avant-garde, how he introduced the public to contemporary composers and works, as he did with the Austrian Gustav Mahler for the American concert audience or Igor Stravinsky for the Greeks, they do not explain the innovative views on orchestra conducting: “Performance is teamwork, it’s collaboration, it’s not the work of slaves on a conductor’s baguette.” Mostly, however, numbers are cold and therefore don’t care how often the genius artist used words like “soul” or “passion” in his conversations.

I would like to hear such stories and details about his work at the round table organized by OPANDA on the coming Saturday, October 15, dedicated to the life and work of the main Greek musician and composer. “But that’s exactly the goal. Let the audience be captivated by the creator and man Dimitris Mitropoulos. This is not a musicological conference,” Stefania Merakou, director of the Lillian Woodoury Music Library, assures me.

His unique opera Sister Beatrice will be staged for the third time in its history at the Olympia Theatre.

“He himself was looking for communication with the public, he considered it a condition of work to “travel,” he adds. Prominent musicologists and researchers of his work (Nikos Maliaras, Ioannis Foulias, Byron Fidetzis, Michalis Oikonomou, Markos Tsetsos, Haris Xanthoudakis) will gather in the lobby of the Olympia Theater and try to shed light – each from his own point of view – on aspects of the versatility of his artistic personality and honor his contributions to Greek and international music with their references. Mrs. Meraku’s speech was born on the occasion of a photograph. “A photograph of him and Mikis Theodorakis fell into my hands, and I began to investigate their acquaintance and their opinions about each other. This prompted me to talk about his relationship with other Greek composers.”

Jazz and swing

I find that the texts concerning Mitropoulos depict the profile of a man devoted to music, hard working, indifferent to the pleasures of social life. “He was an avid mountaineer, that is well known,” Ms Merakow corrects me. It was not for me, as, probably, for many others, because, perhaps, it was not known that in the years of America he loved jazz. During his tenure as director of the Minneapolis Symphony, he met Benny Goodman, and the newspapers of the time wrote that the “king” of swing met the “king” of symphonic music. “Swing is something new for me, very exciting. Maybe I don’t fully understand it, because I have a different ear, but it makes me emotional,” he admitted.

No matter how “open” he was to new sounds, he had the same courage and self-confidence, especially in his youth, and an important proof of this is the opera “Sister Beatrice”, in three acts and on a libretto by the symbolist writer Morris Maeterlinck. This opera, with which the homage to Mitropoulos opens on Friday, October 14 at Olympia, in concert form and to music directed by Pierre Dimousseau, unfortunately does not have many stage metaphors. Does the speech relate to its topic?

Maeterlinck’s specific religious drama preoccupied several foreign composers before Mitropoulos. He himself showed interest in Beatrice as early as 1915, when he composed a piano solo. Three years later he completed an opera on the same theme. He was only 22 years old. “This opera is very typical of the genius of Mitropoulos. He is almost a teenager, and yet he demonstrates an amazing assimilation of elements of the French school of César Franck, Debussy, and also Wagner,” says Byron Fidetsis, chief musician and artistic director of the Athens Philharmonic Orchestra. On May 11, 1920, with the help of the family of the young soprano Katina Paxinos, with whom the young composer was rumored to have some kind of relationship, he was presented again in Dimitria in Thessaloniki in 1996 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the composer’s birth , and now it rises again thanks to the Frenchman (Olivier Decaux),” notes Mr. Fidetzis, adding that luck must be better than that of Greek opera, and even in a work of real artistic value. “It is not difficult at all and is not intended for the few “- confirms Pierre Dimousseau. “Like all youth work, it aims to express strong emotions and, therefore, appeals directly but to the hearts of all of us. I can make out many parts of it: the first arioso of Prince Bellindor, the music associated with Beatrice’s hair, the choir of angels … Oh, come and listen, I swear you will like it.