Est 1923

Mikroutsikos (The) Return of Helen

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Thanos Mikroutsikos

Genre:

Opera

Label: EMI

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 125

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: 556854-2

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
(The) Return of Helen Thanos Mikroutsikos, Composer
Alexandros Myrat, Conductor
Antonis Koronaios, Servant, Tenor
Camerata - Orchestra of the Friends of Music
Christophoros Stamboglis, Menelaus of Sparta, Bass
Dimitri Kavrakos, Ruler of Egypt, Bass
Eleni Liona, Prophetess, Mezzo soprano
Greek Radio-Television Chorus
Julia Souglakou, Helen of Egypt, Soprano
Mata Katsuli, Helen of Troy, Soprano
Pamela Pantos, Helen of Sparta, Mezzo soprano
Tassis Kristojannis, Doctor, Baritone
Thanos Mikroutsikos, Composer
Yannis Christopoulos, Menelaus of Egypt, Tenor
Thanos Mikroutsikos’s opera was first performed in Athens in 1993 and revived in January 1999, when this recording was made (it has since been heard in Montpellier and at the Florence Maggio Musicale). As the cast-list implies it has a curious form: in the first, third and fifth scenes (there are six, in a single act) ‘Helen of Sparta’ is undergoing a sort of psychoanalysis. In scene 2 we meet ‘Helen of Troy’, watching from the walls of her city the disastrous war that her beauty has brought about, in scene 4 ‘Helen of Egypt’ (the Helen of Strauss’s opera, in short, removed from Troy by magic for the ten years’ duration of the war). In one of the opera’s crucial encounters this Helen is offered three choices: to return to Troy, to rebuild it; to stay in Egypt, whose King loves her; to become immortal, in heaven. She rejects all three, choosing instead the option the gods have forbidden: to return to Sparta, where her three selves can reunite. So two sopranos and a mezzo impersonate those three aspects of Helen (in the final scene they sing together) and a tenor and a bass her husband, Menelaus.
The opera’s musical language is as odd, yet oddly effective, as its dramaturgy. As well as a small but powerfully-used orchestra (single wind, four horns, percussion and strings) there is a prominent trio of clarinet, violin and piano, used partly as a sort of ‘continuo’, mainly to underline the intimacy of the odd-numbered scenes. Mikroutsikos’s music is tonal, gratefully vocal and melodious, tending always to monody and with the vocal line (there are few purely instrumental passages) always in the foreground. The lines are lyrical or declamatory, usually closer to arioso than recitative, and with frequent melismas (one of them, quite startlingly, a literal quotation from La traviata). They are often chant-like, sometimes modal or seemingly folk-song-rooted. The orchestra is used colourfully at moments of drama; in dialogue the accompaniments sometimes sound as though their function is to add a degree of complexity to the vocal melody: they are interesting, but not always really necessary.
I am sure that the opera would work well on stage; though not an ‘important’ new opera, it is an uncommonly imaginative one, telling its story with impressive gravity. It is very well sung, with no weak links in the cast; especially good performances from Tassis Kristojannis as the Doctor, Mata Katsuli as Helen of Troy and Dimitri Kavrakos as the King (here translated as ‘Ruler’) of Greece. The recording is very close and rather airless, but colourful. Reading between the lines, the booklet-notes were written for a festival of operas on the subject of Helen; an imaginative idea, but for the recording there was no need to spend eight pages summarizing the plots of operas by Gluck, Offenbach, Saint-Saens and Strauss; nor for footnotes, in English, explaining that ‘number opera’ and ‘word-painting’ cannot be translated into Greek.'

Mikroutsikos (The) Return of Helen

(The) Return of Helen

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