In memory of Spyros A. Evangelatos
Amyntas
by George Mormoris
A 1745 pastoral comedy
After its premiere at the Athens Festival 2016, the final work directed by Spyros Evangelatos in his lifetime will be again presented this year at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, in loving memory of the late and great director and scholar. In his text for last year’s programme, Spyros Evangelatos wrote the following: “In 1745, a colloquial Greek translation of Torquato Tasso’s Aminta was published anonymously in Venice. Some years ago, I had the good fortune to discover the identity of the anonymous translator: George Mormoris (1720-1790), a scholar and poet from the island of Kythera. Amyntas belongs to the genre of pastoral comedy (commedia pastorale). The play is set in a forest full of love-struck shepherds, sheep, virgin Amazons, wild beasts that were never native to Europe, and legendary creatures such as satyrs, dragons and deities of love. Numerous European dramatists have been influenced by the popular pastoral genre, including Shakespeare himself in plays such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, and The Tempest. Mormoris’ Greek text exudes a freshness and a youthfulness and is noted for its charming humour, its striking language, a mixture of colloquial Greek of the time with the local variety of Kythera, and its scholarly or pseudo-scholarly elements. The production seeks to convey a dreamlike sense, moving to and fro between the atmospherics of a benign nightmare and a poetic farce.”
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Odeon of Herodes Atticus
- 09/10/2017 at 21:00
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