Jan 30, 2011

Sapphic Plea: "Come back to me, Gogyla"



"Come back to me, Gogyla, I beg you!
Show yourself to me again...wearing the milky-white robe.
Oh, what beauty!
If you but knew what passions you awaken, thus adorned...
and how joyful I am that it is not I, but the Goddess from Cyprus herself that is reproaching you;
whom I have for many years begged and beseeched.
Gogyla!
It is as if I long to die on the river banks where the lotus flower blooms,
gazing through the mist at Acheron."

Nana Venetsanou sings a classic poem by Sappho in the ancient Aeolic Greek dialect, put to music by Manos Hadjidakis. The accompanying paintings are mainly by the Pre-Raphaelites, greatly influenced by classical antiquity.

Jan 8, 2011

The Eternal Adolescence of Voice


"Elsa, I'm scared of you. Elsa, I love you.
One moment with you is slaughter. And when you dance alone, walls break and the ceiling falls down.
I thought I was a free bird...but the only one who's free is YOU".


Gone-but-not-forgotten Greek singer Flery Dadonaki sings a song by Dionysis Savopoulos from the 1960s, "Elsa, I'm scared of you" in her own unimitable way. (Recording is from 2000, album "Flery Dadonaki, The Eternal Adolescence of Voice").