As promised, here is an update about our weekend trip to Corinth, Mycenae, and Nafplio.

Corinth

We left Katohi around 7 AM on a Friday morning. Most people slept on the bus (myself included). On the way to Nafplio, we stopped by ancient Corinth for a couple hours and tromped around the ruins. Honestly, ancient Corinth isn’t very impressive to me. Sure, it’s a major attraction for many people because of its connection to the Apostle Paul, but as far as ruins go, there are much better places to visit in Greece.

Far more impressive to me are the ruins just outside the main “touristy” area of Corinth. Across the street from the entrance to ancient Corinth and just down a rocky hill are a number of unlabeled, unguarded ruins, including the ancient theatre! We spent less than an hour exploring the “paid” part of Corinth, and well over an hour scampering around the “unpaid” part. Please be sure to see the picture below of Adam and myself standing just above the ancient theatre.

There’s also an ancient fortress at the top of a mountain nearby (called “Acro-Corinth”), but we didn’t have time as a group to hike to the top. Since several members of our company wanted to brave the mountain, we organized a side trip the following week back to Corinth. Hiking to the top was a blast, especially since I’d been dying to do it since my last trip to Corinth in 2006.

Here’s a slideshow of pictures from Corinth. Click the “play” button to begin the show, and if you wish to download individual pictures, just click anything within the slideshow itself to see all the individual photos.

Nafplio

After our Corinthian excursion, we resumed the drive to Nafplio. After we checked into the Hotel Amalia (5-stars!), we relaxed, napped, and took luxurious showers (yay!) before heading into Nafplio for dinner. Dinner was amazingly expensive. Kat and I only ordered appetizers and a beer, yet the bill turned out close to 20 Euros (around $35). Ouch!

Of course, we could not resist the urge to gorge ourselves on Italian gelatto afterward, so like a herd of salivating zombies we marched in a group from dinner to the world-famous Italian gelateria. Yum! I think almost everyone in the company visited the gelateria at least once a day while in Nafplio.

SATURDAY: After a filling breakfast buffet at the hotel, we visited the old fortress in Nafplio. It’s difficult to describe how much I like running around this fortress. At every turn there are nooks, crannies, ledges, tunnels, towers, and other potentially-dangerous places to explore. It’s wonderful! The view from the fortress also provides some of the most breath-taking scenery I’ve ever seen.

Since the fortress is on top of a small mountain, we had two options for descending: take the bus down, or walk down 999 steps. Naturally, most of us opted for the steps despite advice against it from some local Greeks. They told us it would take at least half an hour to descend the steps. Bah! It only took us 15, and that included stopping to take pictures on the way down.

Here’s a slideshow of assorted pictures from Nafplio.

Mycenae

SUNDAY: After breakfast, we drove out to the ruins of Mycenae. This was the famed city in which Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Aegithus, Electra, and Orestes lived. The ruins of the city are impressive enough, but the massive tombs are unbelievable! Supposedly, the gigantic tombs are for Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, and Aegithus, but no one really knows for sure. We spent close to two hours exploring the ruins, including singing inside the hollow, conical “Treasury of Atreus” (tomb of Agamemnon). Very nice! Very resonant!

Most people went to the beach on Sunday afternoon, but Kat and I opted to stay at the hotel. I’m glad we did because I somehow managed to take a 4-hour nap! For some reason, I didn’t sleep much the first night we were here, so I was grateful for the chance to catch up on some lost sleep.

Sunday dinner was on our own in Nafplio again. After that first expensive meal, we wanted to avoid fancy restaurants, so we found a place that sold gyros and ate our fill, (followed of course) by one last batch of gelatto.

And finally, here is a collection of photos from Mycenae. Enjoy!

It was a unique cultural experience for me to sit in the midst of the Greek audience during the performance. To get an idea of what I mean, first take everything that you know about audience etiquette at theatrical or musical performances in the United States and throw it out the window. At the beginning of the performance, the audience quieted while the musicians tuned, but shortly thereafter, the commotion began. People talked and gossiped, kids ran around, camera bulbs flashed, cigarettes went ablaze, and cell phones rang constantly. Like in America, people fumbled for their mobile phones when they rang, but for a completely different purpose. Instead of silencing the phones, people ANSWERED them and carried on conversations right in the theatre! There was often more activity happening in the audience than on-stage!

As I said, it’s a unique cultural experience. Aside from the mobile phone aspect, this must be how audiences in 17th and 18th century Italian opera houses behaved! Despite the general commotion, once something of importance starts happening on-stage, the audience snaps to attention. For instance, when the handmaids brought out the purple cloth for Agamemnon entrance to the palace, you could have heard a pin drop. In short, I learned that you must EARN the audience’s attention here – it is not granted by default.

We were afraid that attendance to our performance would be lax due to the language barrier (our show is in both English and Greek), but we were wrong. I have no official head count, but the mayor of the city estimated that roughly 500 people attended. Not bad at all.

I took no pictures during the actual performance, but here is a huge gallery of pictures from tech week, including the final dress rehearsal.

After-Party

After the show, we tore down the set and raced back to Katohi to change clothes for our dinner with the mayor. Dinner started around midnight, and we ate outdoors in the town square. I thought it a feast fit for a king – they brought out platter after platter of delicacies, and we ate “community” style by passing plates to one another. All in all, we feasted until 3 AM. Wow. It was a memorable experience.

My next post will cover our adventures in Corinth, Mycenae, and Nafplio. Stay tuned!

The mayor of the village of Katohi wants to take us out for dinner after our performance. Keep in mind that our show will not start until 9:30 PM, so we’re likely looking at dinner around midnight. While that may sound bizarre to my American readers back home, it’s perfectly normal in Greece.

Two years ago, the mayor took us all out to eat after our performance of “The Bacchae”, and he liked the first piece I wrote for the show so much that he demanded an encore performance around the dinner table! It’s a different mayor this time, so we’ll see if anything like that happens again.

Delphi

As I promised in my last post, here’s an update (plus pictures) concerning some of our recent adventures here. Back in June, our first weekend excursion was to the ancient sacred site of Delphi. We left early on a Saturday morning and had a three-hour bus trip, the last hour of which was uphill, through twisting, treacherous terrain. We all held our breath when our bus driver attempted a 180-degree turn on a tiny mountain road with no guardrail to stop us from careening off the cliff, but the driver did a masterful job.

This was my second trip to Delphi, and I found the ruins just as impressive as I did the first time. Most things were just as I remember them, such as the lovely temple to Athena and the vast temple of Apollo (the oracle itself). Please see the collection of pictures below.

There’s a lot to see at Delphi in addition to the temples, such as the ancient theatre and the Stadium at the top. It’s customary to engage in a foot-race in the Stadium, but unlike my last visit, no one was allowed into the Stadium this time. That minor inconvenience did not stop two members in our company, who proceeded to jump the rope and race through the Stadium, much to the dismay of the guard!

Once we descended from the mountain, we cooled off in the museum. Unbelievably, I was able to take some pictures of the famous “Delphi Charioteer” statue without anyone around it!

Yannina

The following weekend (in early July), we took another day trip, this time to the city of Yannina. This was my first visit there, so I had no idea what to expect. Yannina is a fairly-large city in north-western Greece. Since it has a major university, I kept humorously trying to envision it as Lawrence, KS, but with mountains and ocean.

Our first stop was the famous wax museum, which contains dozens of life-size sculptures all impressively created by a single man. No pictures were allowed inside the museum, so I regret that I have none to show you now.

After lunch, we took a short ferry ride to a small tourist-trap of an island, filled with dozens of little trinket shops, all containing practically the same trinkets. The main attraction on the island was the Ali Pasha museum, which was essentially the place where he lived and was murdered. Apparently he was shot several times and had his head delivered to the Sultan on a silver platter (remember that Greece was swallowed up by the Ottoman empire for about 400 years). Please see the pictures below, including the pictures of a painting representing the death of Ali Pasha.

Once again, thanks for reading! Stay tuned for updates and pictures about Corinth, Mycenae, and Nafplio.

Music

First of all, the music for “Agamemnon” is completely finished. Since we left for Athens in June, I’ve composed roughly 25 minutes of music for the show, scored for clarinet, viola, percussion, and chorus (plus soloists). Whenever and wherever I had an opportunity, I wrote, often completing an entire piece a day! I remember sketching a few tunes on the plane, and I even wrote an arietta for Clytemnestra while sitting at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.

We have one week until we perform “Agamemnon” as part of the Oiniades Theatre Festival, and I’ve been busy rehearsing the chorus for the last month. Our performance is on Sunday, July 27, and we will also have at least one performance back at the University of Kansas in late August. Unlike last time, when I played the role of Dionysus in “The Bacchae” (Euripides), I actually get to sit in the audience and watch the production. What a treat! I like to joke that I should just start enthusiastically singing along with the chorus during the performance, pretending that all the tunes are well-known, popular tunes. That should confuse the Greek audience pretty thoroughly!

Athens

Before I get carried away talking about the production, allow me to switch gears and document our travels a bit. Getting to Athens from Kansas took a LONG time. Once we claimed our luggage, we jumped on the metro headed for the hotel. See the picture in the gallery below of myself, Kat, and Dennis Christilles (the director) on the metro looking very tired and greasy after our long series of flights. Dennis is so tired, his eyes are closed!

I also included a few obligatory pictures of the Acropolis.

This is my third stay in Athens (counting the previous two visits from 2006), and honestly, it’s one of the scarier cities I’ve ever visited. Our hotel (on Menander street) was a fairly-nice hotel in a disturbingly-bad neighborhood. Every night we saw hundreds of angry-looking Middle-Eastern immigrants swarming in the streets outside the hotel, blocking all traffic. The women in our group were advised not to leave the hotel in the evening without a “man-shield.” Unbelievable.

Fortunately, none of us ran into any trouble, and we got to enjoy our time trekking around the city.

Since this is an outing of mostly theatre people, we were naturally fascinated by the Theatre of Dionysus, just down the hill from the Acropolis. Also see in the gallery above a photo of our entire group in all of our exhausted glory. Keep in mind that our Acropolis tour was mere hours after we stepped off the plane in Athens.

Katohi

After a few days exploring the attractions in Athens, we boarded a bus headed for the village of Katohi, our “home away from home.” Katohi literally means “The Occupation”, and while practicing our Greek in the Athens hotel, we alarmed the desk attendant by telling him we were traveling to “Katohi.” Having never heard of such a small village, he thought at first that part of his nation must be undergoing a hostile takeover. Given Greece’s history, I can’t blame him (they were swallowed up by the Ottoman Empire for about 400 years). Katohi itself actually was occupied by the Germans for part of the 20th century, hence the name.

Anyway, we safely made it to the tiny farming village of Katohi. Since life moves at such a slow pace here, not much has changed in the last two years, with the exception that there are now TWO Internet cafes instead of one. The empty elementary school where we reside is just as I remember it. One main difference is that we actually have glorious air conditioning in two rooms, which makes living in a school during the Mediterranean summer much more tolerable.

On the day we arrived, many people turned out to meet us, many of whom I had met on the previous trip. We exchanged Greek kisses (both cheeks), and one young woman actually started singing some of the pieces I wrote for the show last time. It was a nice feeling. I appear to be some sort of mini-celebrity in the village – many people remember me as Dionysus from “The Bacchae.”

Living in an elementary school is not the most luxurious of settings, but the local residents tried very hard to make us welcome. They cleaned the school thoroughly and set up beds for us. I just try to think of it as glorified camping.

Just outside the village of Katohi is the ancient Oiniades theatre. For us, it’s a profound and humbling experience to perform in a place where music and theatre were performed thousands of years ago. We’ve only been out to the theatre twice so far, but beginning next week we will rehearse there every afternoon and evening. Here are a few pictures of our humble abode, plus the Oiniades theatre. Just look at that view!

The first time we visited the theatre, a local news reporter met with Dennis and myself and asked us questions about our production of “Agamemnon.” She documented all of our responses, making a special note that I composed all the music right here in Katohi. I haven’t seen the magazine article for which the interview was intended yet, but a local friend of mine joked with me that I’m going to be famous in Greece after the publication. Yeah, right!

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for coming updates (and pictures) about Delphi, Corinth, Iannina, Mycenae, and Nafplio!

I’m returning to the Oiniades Theatre Festival as a guest composer, this time for a modern adaptation of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. As before, Dennis Christilles (a professor of theatre at KU) is creating the adaptation and directing the play, and I am composing music for the choruses and interludes. I’ve written some of the music already, but will write the rest in Greece.

I love this Greek experience because it is truly unique. The vocal abilities of the actors, plus the instruments involved, vary each time, and somehow I have to create a musical score that works with the forces we have available. It is truly a show custom-created for the ensemble.

Last time we produced The Bacchae by Euripides. This time it is Agamemnon. Unlike last year, I will not be playing an acting role – only a musical one. So what’s the premise of the show? In a nutshell, Agamemnon has been gone for ten years, laying siege to Troy in order to capture and bring back Helen. At the beginning of the play, a watchman notices that signal fires have been lit, signaling the fall of Troy. A herald eventually arrives, bringing news that Troy has been destroyed and that Agamemnon and his surviving forces should return home soon.

One would expect this to be good news, especially to Clytemnestra (Agamemnon’s wife), but one must remember that she has been at home brooding for ten years. Not only did her husband abandon her for a decade in a “rescue” effort that sapped Greece of its resources, he also sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia in order to receive favorable winds for their passage to Troy. To make matters worse, Agamemnon returns with a pretty Trojan prophetess as his concubine (Cassandra). To put it lightly, Clytemnestra is just a bit “peeved.”

Clytemnestra welcomes Agamemnon home, insisting that he walk on a red carpet into the palace. Agamemnon is hesitant not to seem prideful or arrogant, but eventually concedes. He goes into the palace and is murdered in the bath by Clytemnestra. Cassandra prophecies about her own death to the unbelieving chorus, then walks into the palace and is also slain by the raging Clytemnestra.

The play ends with Clytemnestra attempting to justify her actions while Aegisthus delivers a boastful speech that nearly ends in a brawl. Clytemnestra chastises him, stating that there has already been enough blood spilled today. The chorus then drops a foreboding hint that Orestes (the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra) will surely return in order to seek vengeance for his father’s murder. Yes, Agamemnon is the first in a trilogy of plays about the cursed House of Atreus. If you want to read further, start with an overiew of the Oresteia.

I leave you (for now) with this, the supposed “death mask” of Agamemnon, which is on display in a museum in Athens.

I have limited internet access in the village of Katohi at Oiniades, but will create at least one new post and upload some pictures in July. Until then, my best wishes to all of you.

In other news, this is an exciting upcoming week. On April 1st, my 10-piece chamber ensemble composition, titled “Feridoun,” will be premiered on the “Stack the Dectet” concert in Atlanta with my friend Daniel Swilley conducting.

Also in early April is the run of the play “Keely and Du” at KU, for which I wrote some music for the beginning and the ending. I’ll attend the show on opening night. More on that later.

Here are the program notes that I wrote for “Div.”

Inspired by stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (Persian Book of Kings), Div is a work depicting the dual facets of these colorful beings.

A “div” (pronunciation: deev) often has negative associations, and in Persian mythology is an evil spirit akin to a demon that loves to cause harm and destruction. However, some divs may actually be helpful and benign. Unlike in Judeo-Christian tradition, a div is a physical being, often pictured with combined human and animal features. Though they have two arms and legs like humans, often they feature tufted tails like a lion, hairy, multicolored bodies, and bestial faces. Divs are frequently mentioned in the Shahnameh; one famous story involves the struggle between the Persian hero Rostam and the Akvan Div, a white demon whose name means “evil mind.”

Musically, the first half of the piece represents the malevolent side of divs, whereas the latter half represents their benign nature. Subtitled Ahura, a Farsi word representing the “right” kind of divinity and the moral opposite of evil, this latter half utilizes much of the same melodic content, though slightly transformed. Does the work end in a pure, righteous state, or do some elements of the “evil” div mischievously return? The listener may fully decide.

Div was commissioned by the KU Helianthus Contemporary ensemble.

On the Monday following the closing of our performance, we took a bus to Patra and then a ferry to the island of Kathalonia. There we spent much leisurely time, shopping, eating, touring, and sleeping. Sleeping is an emphasized activity in Greece, especially during the hottest part of the afternoon. Kat and I were pleased to find wheat bread and chocolate soy milk (a delicacy!) in Kathalonia, and on this we feasted.

Unfortunately, we discovered that our Sony digital camera was randomly broken on the night of our performance. Every time we attempted to turn on the power, it emphatically told us to “Turn the power off and on again.” Note to self: never buy another Sony digital camera. So… I don’t have any more pictures to share at the moment. Our study abroad group will get together shortly for a “picture” party, and once I have more pictures I will post some here.

The big news is that during our leisure time after the show, I finished extracting ALL of the parts for Symphony No. I – “Persepolis.” Whew! Once I returned to the States, I proofed and mailed them to Dr. Joe Brashier, director of Bands at Valdosta State University. I was very pleased to hear him say that his group will read through all four movements this coming week! Provided all goes as planned, the world premiere will be coming up this fall.

Tomorrow, we perform the show in the ancient theatre here (Oiniades). Our production is just over an hour in duration, and this includes about 25 minutes of music. I look forward to the show, and feel it will be a success.

Positives: I’m being spoiled here. Never before have I had the opportunity to finish a composition and start rehearsing it with the instrumentalists ten minutes later. This has been the case for a number of pieces. I’ve also enjoyed finishing a composition in the morning and starting choral rehearsals the same afternoon. I can certainly get used to that. Working with Meggi is great too, of course.

Negatives: Mosquitos. Lots of them! Flies too.

Apart from the musical aspects, we’ve done A LOT of sightseeing. As I write this, I’m attempting to upload a multitude of pictures that we’ve taken. Provided everything finishes in the allotted time that I have here, you can view these pictures here:

http://www.bondari.com/greece/

Quicktime is highly recommended for viewing the above site.

Sean Smith is currently sitting by me working on the group web site. Provided all goes well, you should see updates there, too.

That’s about all the time I have for now. I’ll post again when I have a chance.

There I will write the rest of the music for The Bacchae of Euripides, which will be rehearsed and performed in the Theatre of Oiniades. When we return to the States, we will put on the production at KU three more times (August 18-20).

Of course, a trip like this is not all about business. There is much sightseeing involved, and lots of time to mingle with the locals. A few of the locals will actually join us and become part of our production while we are in Katohi.

I’m not sure if I will have internet available while I am there. If not, this will be my last post until August. If I do have internet, of course I will post updates (and pictures!). In hopes of available internet, another member of the group has created a site dedicated to our trip. You may view that site here:

http://kugreece.seansmitharts.com/

It’s sparse right now, but will hopefully be updated while we are in Greece.

In other news, Kat and I just returned from Everett Griffiths and Melanie Hadley’s wedding in Colorado. We had fun hanging out with their families, enjoying the scenery, and even going on a hike or two! After a long 15-hour drive back home, we had one short day (today) to spend packing, running errands, paying bills, and fixing a composition professor’s misbehaving printer. All in a day’s work…

Thanks for reading. (Hopefully) see you before August.