Spyros Samaras

Spyros Samaras around the age of 16

Spyros Samaras (actually Spyridon-Filiskos Samaras, Greek Σπυρίδων Φιλίσκος Σαμάρας , in Italy and Germany also Spiro Samara ; born  November 29, 1861 in Corfu ; †  April 7, 1917 in Athens ) was a Greek composer and creator of the Olympic anthem . As a composer of the Younger Ionian School , he was the best known internationally among his Greek contemporaries and the first to have an important career abroad.

Life

Samaras grew up as the son of the Greek sub-consul Scarlatos Samaras and Fanny geb. Courtenay (probably of English origin). Recent findings suggest that he was the illegitimate son of the composer Spyridon Xyndas . After the death of Scarlatos Samaras, who opposed the son's musical ambitions, Xyndas became his first music teacher, who also supported him in enrolling at the newly founded Athens Conservatory. He studied there a. a. with Frederikos Voloninis senior (violin), Angelo Mascheroni and mainly Enrico Stancapiano (theory, orchestration). Most of the works from this period have been lost, including a Fantasia for Petrella's opera La Contessa d'Amalfi , a serenade dedicated to the Greek Queen Olga, Melancholy Thoughts on the Death of Captain Vourvakhi , Jugend (waltz), all piano works. He also contributed some songs to the Komidyllio Torpille (Τορπίλλαι, "Torpedos", 1879) by Iosif Kesari . From other sources one learns of plans for a first opera, a symphony and a violin sonata.

From 1882 to 1885 he studied with Léo Delibes at the Paris Conservatoire , and later with Jules Massenet . While playing as second violinist in an orchestra that played in opera houses, he moved to Parisian salons, where he was patronized by some aristocratic members of society and cultivated friendship with other Greeks abroad such as the poet Demetrius Vikelas and the baritone Periklis Avarandinos. His Parisian work can only be traced from a few surviving printed works, including Scènes Orientales for piano four hands (1883), Chitarrata for mandolins, guitars, flutes, oboes, cellos and double basses (1885) as well as a few other piano compositions and songs.

Although some written testimony from his teachers and contemporaries to Samaras' extraordinary musical talent have been preserved, he went to Milan in 1885 . The publication of the Scènes Orientales and some romances for piano by Ricordi may have contributed to this decision, but it was Ricordi's competitor Edoardo Sonzogno who tied him to his publishing house Sonzogno in Milan, where most of his works appeared, for the next few decades . As an opera composer, Samaras earned a high reputation in Italy, as evidenced by the schedules of the time and the correspondence with contemporaries such as Puccini , Mascagni and Giordano . The works were performed very successfully not only throughout Italy, but also in France and Germany.

Samaras maintained contact with Greece during this time, and his works were played out in Greek in Athens and other cities. Photographs also document his close contact with the Greek royal family. In 1896 Samaras settled in Athens again, but continued to publish his last completed operas in Italy and Germany ( La biondinetta , Gotha 1906).

Possibly Georg I tried to find him for a position at the Athens Conservatory (Odeion) , which obviously failed because of the great influence of the director Georgios Nazos there, who was oriented towards German Romanticism . The First World War cut Samaras off from the Western European music centers, but in Greece, too, in view of Nazos' opposition and the rise of Manolis Kalomiris , he was no longer able to gain any appreciation worth mentioning; he lived off the composition of three-act, often nationally oriented operettas, of which three were still came out at the Athens Municipal Theater. When Spyros Samaras died in Athens on March 25, 1917, only the first act of a last opera La Tigra based on a libretto by Renato Simoni was completed.

Artistic creation

As a representative of Italian late romanticism, Samaras was primarily associated with the composers of musical verismo , but from a musicological point of view, La martire (1894) is the only one of his 15 operas whose subject actually implies a naturalistic description. Nevertheless, his style seems to have had a significant influence on the Verists, but above all on the young Puccini, whose career was only just beginning in the 1890s and who has proven to know Samaras personally well and also shared the librettists Ferdinando Fontana and Luigi Illica with him.

Samaras was considered an imaginative melodist: The famous aria Ridi, Pagliaccio from Leoncavallos Pagliacci (1892) is said to have been a copy of an aria from Samaras' lost opera Lionella from 1891, which Samaras "gave" to him for his one-act play. As a late romantic, he worked with large symphonic forms and, like Puccini, used guiding and memory motifs in free form , as developed by Richard Wagner for the stage.

Samaras' best-known work today is the Olympic Anthem , which he composed for the first modern Olympic Games based on a text by Kostis Palamas in Athens. This hymn has been the official hymn of the Olympic Games since 1958.

A large part of his work was lost in 1943 in the Allied bombing raids on the Sonzogno publishing house in Milan and on the Kahnt publishing house in Leipzig. Samara's widow, the pianist Anna Antonopoulos, shipped the notes she had left with her to Sonzogno in Milan in the 1960s. It was only reluctantly that works by him were discovered again in French and Greek libraries towards the end of the 20th century. Some of his songs became very popular in Greece and have been posthumously released on records by well-known Greek singers.

Works (selection)

Title page to Flora mirabilis , Milan 1887

Operas

• Flora mirabilis , libretto Ferdinando Fontana, 1886 Teatro alla Scala , Milan
• Medge , libretto Ferdinando Fontana, 1888 Teatro Constanzi, Rome
• La Martire , libretto Luigi Illica, 1894 Teatro Lirico Internazionale, Milan
• La furia domata , libretto EA Butti and G. Macchi after Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew , 1895 Teatro Lirico Internazionale, Milan
• Storia d'amore o La biondinetta , libretto Paul Milliet , 1903 Teatro Lirico Internazionale, Milan
• Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle Libretto Paul Milliet, 1905 Teatro Politeama, Genoa
• Rhea , libretto Paul Milliet, 1908 Teatro Verdi, Florence
  • NB La Martire , La biondinetta , and Rhea were recorded on CD (Label: Lyra)

Operettas

• Polemos en Polemo ( Πόλεμος ἐν πολέμῳ , "War in War", libretto Georgios Tsokopoulos and Iannis Delikaterinis, Athens 1914)
• Pringipissa tis Sasonos ( Πριγκίπισσα τῆς Σασῶνος , "Princess of Sazan ", libretto Nikolaos Laskaris and Polyvios Dimitrakopoulos, Athens 1915)
• Critique opoula (Κρητικοπούλα, "The Cretan Girl", Libretto Laskaris and Dimitrakopoulos, Athens 1916)

Piano music

• Scènes Orientales, Quatre Suites caractéristiques for piano four hands, 1882 Paris
• Bohémienne , 1888

literature

• Giorgos Leotsakos : Spyridon-Filiskos Samaras , booklet text for La martire , Athens 1993, Lyra CD No. ML 0156

Web links

• Portrait on a private page (Ger.)
• Sheet music and audio files by Spyros Samaras in the International Music Score Library Project

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Leotsakos, s. Lit.