About Mikis Theodorakis


Mikis Theodorakis was born in Chios Greece, on 29 July 1925.
He presented his first concert at the age of seventeen.

Theodorakis participated in the resistance against the Italian fascist and Nazi forces that occupied Greece. In 1943, he was arrested by the Italian fascist forces and tortured.

After World War II, civil war broke out in Greece, and Theodorakis spent time in exile. Eventually he was able to finish his studies and graduate from the Athens Conservatory in 1950.

In 1954 he won a scholarship to the Conservatoire in Paris, where he continued his studies in music. From 1954 on, he won prizes and growing recognition for his chamber music, symphonic music, music for film, and increasingly, music in "popular" genres. Among many other works, he composed the music for the film Zorba the Greek.

In 1967, a group of army colonels staged a coup in Greece and imposed a dictatorship that lasted until 1974. The dictatorship arrested Theodorakis and imprisoned him in isolation.
Following a hunger strike and hospitalization, he was exiled with his family to the Oropos camp in Arcadia, where his health deteriorated seriously. A surge of protest was mounted abroad, and personalities like Arthur Miller, Laurence Olivier, Yves Montand and others called for his release. Finally, under this pressure, he was released in April, 1970, and he moved to Paris.

When the Greek dictatorship fell in 1974, Theodorakis returned to Greece. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.

About Canto General

Canto General is an epic poem about the South American continent, its nature, its people, its historical destiny. It was published in Mexico in 1950, and – underground, because Neruda was in political exile -- in Chile. Within a short time, it was translated into ten languages.

Mikis Theodorakis discovered Neruda's Canto General while in exile in 1971, on a concert-tour in Chile at the invitation of president Salvador Allende. Theodorakis said of the epic poem that it is "a gospel of our time." Theodorakis's musical setting of 13 parts of the great poem by Neruda has given us one of the major choral works of the latter half of the 20th century.

Theodorakis was to premiere the first seven parts of his musical setting of Canto General in Chile in September 1973, in the stadium of Santiago. But on September 11 –- ironic date -- the military junta under Pinochet overthrew and assassinated Salvador Allende. Instead of the scheduled concert, the stadium was used for imprisoning Allende's supporters, and was the scene of the torture and murder of the populist Chilean singer Victor Jara.

Two years later, when the Greek dictatorship had fallen, Theodorakis gave the first performance of Canto General in his native Greece.

On hearing of Neruda's death, Theodorakis added one more section to the music: a Requiem, sung in Greek, in honor of Neruda. And he promised to play at least one part of the Canto General in each of his popular concerts until Chile's liberation from the Pinochet dictatorship.

In 1993, Theodorakis could at last conduct his score in Chile and pay homage at the tomb of Pablo Neruda.

CLICK HERE FOR AUDIO EXCERPTS from the Master Chorale's previous performances of Canto General.

CantoGeneral

About Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was born July 12, 1904, in Parral, Chile. His father was a railway employee, his mother a teacher. He began publishing articles and poems at the age of thirteen.

In 1945 he was elected Senator of the Republic in Chile. His protests in 1947 against the repressive policies of President Gonzalez Videla caused Videla to put a price on his head, and Neruda had to go underground in Chile, until he managed to leave the country in 1949. He returned home in 1952.

Neruda was nominated as a candidate for the Chilean presidency in 1970, but gave his support instead to Salvador Allende, who was elected as the first democratically elected socialist head of state. Neruda served as Chilean ambassador to France from 1970-1972, returning to Chile because of failing health due to prostate cancer.

With American backing, Augusto Pinochet led a coup and overthrew the Allende government in 1973 and installed a dictatorship. Pinochet's armed forces conducted a search of Neruda's house and grounds, during which he remarked, "Look around – there's only one thing of danger for you here – poetry."
Pablo Neruda received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971.

Neruda died of leukemia on the evening of September 23, 1973. Subsequent to his death, his homes in both Valparaiso and Santiago were looted and vandalized by Pinochet's armed forces. His funeral took place with a massive police presence, and mourners took advantage of the occasion to protest the Pinochet regime.

Today the three houses that Neruda owned in Chile are all open to the public as museums.