One hundred and two years ago, “Sister Beatrice” by Dimitris Mitropoulos was presented in Athens. In 1920 it was staged at the Municipal Theater of Athens with the then dramatic and poignant Katina Paxinou as the star. Since then, the work has been presented only once more, at a concert in 1996 in Thessaloniki with soloist Marta Arapi and principal musician Byron Fidecis. His concert performance on October 14 at Olympia by the Athens Municipality Symphony Orchestra and Choir was dedicated to the recently deceased Arapi.

In the text of the Belgian Maurice Maeterlinck, the work is part of the symbolism current of the early 20th century. The theme and music place it equally between Chausson’s King Arthur (1903) and Debussy’s Peleus et Melissante (1902), the latter also based on Maeterlinck’s text, as well as Ariadne et Cyanopogon (1907). from Dicky. In terms of genre—Mitropoulos calls his work a “miracle”—it is casually recalled that Debussy’s medieval The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (1911) is characterized as a “mystery.”

French actors made a decisive contribution to the success of Dimitris Mitropoulos’ opera.

Late romanticism, Wagnerian echoes and Debussy’s modernism creatively inspire Mitropoulos, who was a student of the Belgian Armand Marsic. The work is very dramatic, musically dense, with well-calculated ups and downs. Obviously, the triptych “sin – guilt – forgiveness” touched the young composer on a personal level, regardless of what touched the artistic and especially the musical world of his time. In 1917, Mitropoulos presented his piano sonata “My Soul”. The musicologist Ioannis Fulias showed the close connection between the musical material from the three parts of the sonata “Love”, “Pain”, “Faith” with the music of “Sister Beatrice”.

Olivier Decaux, the French artistic director of the Olympia, did the obvious, but not always self-evident thing: for the new production, he invited a French main musician and three French soloists with healthy voices and clear articulation to play the main roles. The success of the evening is primarily due to the excellent conductor Pierre Dimuseau, who knows how to bring out the subtleties of French music, allowing voices to be heard even when the orchestration is formidable. The plasticity with which he conducted emphasized the drama of the music, emphasized its tension and illuminated its lyricism. The unstoppable dramatic soprano Katherine Einhold sang the longest-running lead role with a powerful, vibrant and full-bodied voice. In the duet of Wagnerian proportions in the first act, the tenor Valentin Till distinguished herself next to her, and Eloise Moss was excellent in the role of the abbess, intensely dramatic, with a rich, warm mezzo voice. Together with them, a number of worthy Greek soloists (Karayianni, Kritsotakis, Spitadis, Pantazopoulos) and members of the municipal choir completed the distribution.