Pavlos Karrer: Marathon Salamis Act 3 Dance of the Priest

Marathon-Salamis: historical melodrama in four acts. Music: Pavlos Karrer Libretto: Memnon Martzokis Performed: 14 February 2003 by the Greek National Opera. Director: Byron Fidetzis Pavlos Karrer (Carrer, Karrer or Karreris in Greek) (1829–1896) was a key representative figure of the Ionian School of Music and one of the most popular and widely performed composers in 19th-century Greece. He was first Greek music composer to put forward a collection of operatic and shorter vocal works based on national subjects, Greek-language libretti and melodies inspired by the folk and urban popular tradition of Greece. More than anyone, Karreris is believed to have attempted the creation of Greek national opera and has sometimes been titled as the Composer of 1821 (the Greek War of Independence). He was influenced by Verdi and to a lesser extent by the Bel canto. However, over time and like the rest of the Ionian School of Music, Karreris’s compositional signature became more personal and distinct. Karreris was the son of a prominent mercantile family from Zakynthos with ancient roots in Cyprus and marriage connections to the old Byzantine elite. He studied music in Zakynthos under Giuseppe Cricca and Francesco Marangoni. In 1850, during the Risorgimento, Pavlos Karreris moved to Austrian-occupied Milan, where he studied with Raimondo Boucheron, Pietro Tassistro and Giuseppe Winter. He achieved early success in Italy where his first operas and ballets were performed on the stages of the Teatro Carcano and the Teatro alla Canobbiana in Milan. Karreris first operatic work, Dante and Beatrice, about the Italian poet Dante Alighieri, his unfulfilled love for Beatrice, his political activities and the Divine Comedy provoked suspicion by the Austrian police given its political undercurrents. A few years later, Karreris's opera, Isabella d’Aspeno met with great applause at the Teatro Carcano (April 1854 and March 1856). Some scholars believe this opera to have been one of the models for Verdi’s famous opera, Un ballo in maschera. Karreris achieved further success in Italy but like any composer working in Italy during this period, he came up against the mania for Verdi. Karreris moved back to Zakynthos in 1857 with plans to become a Greek national composer. Shortly after, he married the talented soprano and interpreter of his works, Isabella Giatra. Despite early success in Milan and Italy during the Risorgimento, Kerkyra and then later Athens, Karreris was unable to secure the performance of his opera Marco Bozzari or Markos Botsaris in Greek in his native Zakynthos because the British occupiers feared the subject of the opera (the Greek War of Independence) would inflame pro-independence sentiments among Zakynthians. In mainland Greece, Markos Botsaris was first performed in Patra in 1861. Markos Botsaris was the most popular Greek opera of the 19th and early 20th century with more than 45 stagings and arousing audiences wherever it was staged. Karreris never managed to watch his last opera on stage, the neo-classicly inspired, Marathon-Salamis (1888), prelude to the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC. Many believe this is his greatest work. Interestingly, it also had some modernist influences. It had its world premiere in 2003 after its staging was not held as originally planned in 1888 because the Greek Orthodox Church and municipal authorities opposed the scene of Greeks worshiping at the Oracle of Delphi. Karreris also left behind several unfinished operas on Greek subject matter which were not saved in the fire following the Great earthquake of 1953 on Zakynthos. Karreris also composed many vocal music and instrumental pieces. Apart from composition, Karreris was also a teacher, conductor and opera entrepreneur. Source: Pavlos Karrer (2013) by Avra Xapapadakou