S4E2. Zorba's dance for 100th Arena di Verona Opera Festival
'Zorba the Greek' ballet has returned to the Italian city in 2023, to celebrate the historic milestone of the most famous opera festival in the world. The real and Balkan story is well worth exploring
Hi,
welcome back to BarBalkans, the newsletter (and website) with blurred boundaries.
2023 is a special year for the art world. The 100th edition of the Arena di Verona Opera Festival was staged in the world temple of opera.
This summer festival has run almost uninterruptedly through the entire last century of European history - from 1913 to the present day - with only three interruptions due to World Wars and the COVID-19 pandemic. And this 100th edition was celebrated with big surprises in the Italian city that hosts the most famous Roman amphitheater.
One of the surprises came from two worlds that are (only apparently) far from the Arena di Verona Opera Festival. Ballet and the Balkans.
On the occasion of another anniversary of major importance to the world art scene, Zorba the Greek has returned to the stage 35 years after its premiere.
From Greece to Verona, following the real story of a man in love with life and dance and inextricably linked to the Balkan peninsula.
The Arena di Verona Opera Festival 2023 program included a unique performance to celebrate its 100th edition. And it revealed a story that has remained hidden for too long in the annals of ballet.
From Greece to Verona
But what is - or better, who is - Zorba the Greek?
Staged as a world premiere at the 1988 Arena di Verona Opera Festival, Zorba the Greek is a two-act ballet composed by Mikis Theodorakis, a political, civic and cultural point of reference in contemporary Greece.
The ballet is developed on the themes from the soundtrack of the homonymous 1964 film. At the same time, the film is based on the 1946 novel Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis.
The ballet commissioned by Fondazione Arena was choreographed by Lorca Massine, who has been called in 2023 to oversee the return of Zorba the Greek in Verona after more than two decades of absence (it was staged also in 1990 and 2002).
Theodorakis and Massine’s Zorba symbolized the euphoria for the beginning of a new era in the late Eighties, anticipating the end of the Iron Curtain. Thirty-five years later, it is still a hymn to celebrate life, looking for inner strength and overcoming cultural barriers and adversity.
Zorba the Greek ballet - which takes inspiration from both the 1946 novel and the 1964 film - is set in an unidentified place in Greece. It tells about the friendship between Zorba, a generous, life-loving Greek, and John, a foreign tourist who wants to participate in local customs.
However, John falls in love with Marina, a Greek girl who is also loved by Yorgos, a local boy. This is how the tension between the local group and ‘the foreigner’ increases more and more. On John’s side stands only Zorba, a man who is well-liked by all the community: he is the expression of folk wisdom and altruism.
A double drama strikes both John and Zorba. Marina is lynched by the crowd for returning the foreigner’s love, while the soubrette Hortensia - loved by the Greek man - dies of illness. They save themselves through dance, the essence of Dionysian spirit. It leads to the final sirtaki crescendo: this is the expression of a whole people’s energy, able to survive any adversity.
Zorba the Greek tells about the meeting, the clash and the fusion of two civilizations: the young and rational modernity - the Apollonian spirit - and the popular impulse made of passion and irrationality - the Dionysian spirit.
Zorba is the personification of extreme vitalism, hoping for a better future and embraces all the dancers in the famous sirtaki.
This dance becomes an expression of wisdom, brotherhood and acceptance. Hostilities disappear and the rousing music fills all the existing void.
Thirty-five years after the premiere in the Arena di Verona, this magic has remained intact.
A Balkan story
But what about the Balkans in all this story?
Because it is true that ‘Balkans’ is a highly controversial word - and social scientist Chiara Milan explained it clearly in BarBalkans’ third season - but this newsletter follows a clear line: Albania and former Yugoslav countries.
Yet, except for the interest in a country that is closely intertwined with the Balkan culture and history, there is much more in Zorba the Greek.
As Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa analyzed in an in-depth article, «yes, he really existed». And Zorba’s story is indeed all Balkan, in many ways.
“Giorgio Zorba 1869-1941”.
His grave is located in Skopje cemetery, in North Macedonia, and this already gives us much food for thought. First and foremost, about the beginning and the end of Giorgio Zorba’s life, who later in Kazantzakis’ novel became Alexis.
Zorba was born at the foot of Mount Olympus, in a part of Greece that belonged to the Ottoman Empire (until the Balkan Wars in 1912-1913). He died in Skopje during World War II, when Macedonia was included in Vardarska Banovina in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
Seventy-two years of life that followed some of the most turbulent pages in the history of the Balkan peninsula: the fall of a century-old Empire, anti-Ottoman uprisings and infighting in the Balkan League, the Great War, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and the expansionism of the Kingdom of Bulgaria thanks to the alliance with Nazi Germany.
Zorba is not a fictional character, but a man linked to the author of this novel published 5 years after Zorba’s death. Giorgio died in Skopje, Alexis in a Serbian village (like the Macedonian capital after World War I).
Kazantzakis and Zorba met in 1915 and their stories strongly inspired the plot of Zorba the Greek. Even if some changes prevent the writer from being taken to court by his friend’s family, as told by a Serbian great-granddaughter to Ethnos newspaper:
«He was accused of tarnishing their father’s memory. But I think we all owe a lot to Kazantzakis. Because he described an outstanding human being, a philosopher who was semi-illiterate but wise, thanks to life experience».
The meeting between the writer and this man in love with life and dance took place on the foot of Mount Olympus in 1915, when Kazantzakis hired Zorba as foreman for a lignite deposit in Kardamyli, in Southern Peloponnese.
Zorba was there because his father Fotis had left his son fields and flocks in Katafygi, after his wife’s death and just before climbing Mount Olympus to become a monk. Because of a pandemic, all sheep died, and Giorgio found himself working in a mine owned by a French company.
He fell in love with the Greek manager’s daughter, Elena Calcunis, who loved him back. After she got pregnant, they ran away and married in secret. Twins were born, but only Andrea - the first of seven children - survived. The reputation as a ladies’ man reported in Zorba the Greek began only after Elena’s death in 1910.
Five years later, Zorba met Kazantzakis. At that time, the writer was a refugee among the monks on Mount Olympus, trying to avoid conscription during World War I. France and the United Kingdom were pressing King Constantine I of Greece to enter the conflict against the Ottoman Empire.
The fates of the two men were brought together by a law exempting mine workers from military conscription, because providing coal to the army was considered a service to the homeland. This is why Kazantzakis bought a disused mine and they both moved to Southern Peloponnese.
However, it did not last long in Kardamyli. In 1917, Kazantzakis had to leave for Switzerland to treat a nervous disease and the coal mine closed. The business went wrong, as much in real life as in the novel and the film.
Two years later, the writer sent a letter to his friend to organize the repatriation of Greek refugees from the Caucasus - fleeing the Bolshevik revolution - on behalf of the government: «I replied that I would go, only if you came too». Zorba agreed.
He returned to Greece in 1920. Then, fate took the two friends apart forever.
In 1920, at the age of 51, Zorba settled permanently in Skopje, where he spent the last period of his life. And here we can find another connection between Balkan history and the hidden story behind Zorba the Greek.
The former miner was granted the exploitation of five mines in what was known at the time as Southern Serbia, in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (succeeded to the Kingdom of Serbia the year before).
This is confirmed by a document of the Ministry of Mines and Forests of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (founded in 1929). Giorgio Zorba is an associate of Radomir-Rasa Pašić, son of Serbian long-time Prime Minister, Nikola Pašić.
In Skopje, Zorba was known to everyone, especially in the taverns where he spent his evenings, playing the santouri (a characteristic Greek string instrument) and dancing. He lived in a hotel and refused to live with his children, who had settled in Skopje.
One day in 1941, when Europe was again at war and Vardarska Banovina (the region that included the present capital of North Macedonia) was occupied by the Kingdom of Bulgaria, Kazantzakis received a telegram at his home on the island of Aegina (off the coast of Thessaloniki):
«Zorba’s last words were for you. Then he got out of bed and went to the window. He looked at the mountains and, suddenly, he laughed and run around the room like a horse. Death found him like that».
Almost dancing, Giorgio Zorba died. He was reborn five years later under the name Alexis. In a novel known throughout the world, source of inspiration for an equally famous film.
And then again in a ballet that enshrined the mystical figure of a man who taught the essence of life, inclusion and endurance of adversity through dance.
From Greece to Verona, from the early 20th century to 2023. In an all-Balkan story.
Pit stop. Sittin’ at the BarBalkans
We have reached the end of this piece of road.
To celebrate this stop with Zorba - the real one, or the one from the novel, the movie or the ballet - today at our bar, the BarBalkans, we find something that best represents the Greek spirit along with sirtaki.
We cannot miss ouzo, the Greek rakija.
This is a distilled spirit made from grape must, with a strong anise flavor (added during the fermentation process along with berries and herbs). The mixture is distilled several times before resting for months and being diluted with water. The alcohol content is around 40%.
The origin of ouzo is uncertain. It is likely to derive from rakı, a distillate spirit with Ottoman origin (made from grapes, corn, potatoes or plums, and flavored with anise and mint) and similar alcohol content. While Balkan rakija reaches 65/70%.
The modern production process using copper stills spread in Greece after independence from the Ottoman Empire, officially gained in 1830. Since 1932, this technique has become the standard one for ouzo production.
Let’s continue BarBalkans journey. We will meet again in two weeks, for the 3rd stop of this season.
A big hug and have a good journey!
If you have a proposal for a Balkan-themed article, interview or report, please send it to redazione@barbalcani.eu. External original contributions will be published every last Friday of the month on the dedicated section BarBalkans - Open bar.
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