In a place with great symbolic value for Thessaloniki, “Thessaloniki’s Acropolis” as Anna Mykoniou, president and artistic director of the cultural center of the Central Macedonia region, characteristically said, the Heptapyrgion Festival 2022 is held for the third year in a row “without hindrance this year”.
“We go strong with fantastic productions that promise our viewers wonderful evenings,” emphasizes Mykoniou, who explains that “we leave behind the difficulties we have faced in previous years due to the coronavirus and proudly prepare the event of this year’s Festival”.
What will we enjoy?
-17 and 18 June: “I was born in Thessaloniki” – with Thessaloniki’s Municipal Symphony Orchestra and the unique composer, lyricist and songwriter Dionysis Savvopoulos, with whom we grew up to this day with the motto “the real time is our son, the old and the young”.
-21 and 22 June: “The songs of Artemis / 1922” – Musical-theatrical performance about the displaced from the Asia Minor population after the Disaster. Songs that we sang loudly or whispered when our ancestors, uprooted, came to the “refugee mother” Thessaloniki, and wondered when they crossed the Bosphorus “what to remember and what to forget about what we went through …”. All proceeds will go to the “Melissa” orphanage.
-26 and 27 June: “Big Voices” – Maria Farantouri, Elli Paspala, Adriana Babali, Evi Siamanta. Wonderful voices, wonderful performances, unique interpreters who with their songs have over the years taken their place in our hearts.
-4 and 5 July: “Requiem for Smyrna” – Georgios Emmanuel Lazaridis with Thessaloniki’s state orchestra and Thessaloniki’s mixed choir. The music enchants the audience in connection with the Nobel Prize-winning poet, Georgios Seferis´, words from the collection of poems “Mythistorima”: “But what do our souls seek on their journey from port to port on rotten wood? Moving crushed stones, inhaling the dew from the trees becomes more difficult every day … in a homeland that is no longer ours or yours”.
-10 July: “Ramon Vargas” Opera Gala with the Thessaloniki State Orchestra. Among the ‘biggest’ voices, since his debut in the early 90’s, it was clear that he would develop into one of the 2000s most famous tenors. Lovers of the genre consider his voice to be the most expressive and flexible voice, especially good at bel canto.
-13 and 14 July: “10 Harps” – well-known classical, cinematic and rock melodies from the biggest harp band in Greece. Ten harps will be performed on Heptapyrgion’s stage together with the two great harpists Katerina Kitsou and Angela Majarova in a pioneering project with special musical interest.
-18 and 19 July: “Cursed Poets” How much do we really know about these “rough diamonds” that Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Poe and our own Karyotakis, Lapathiotis, Polydouri have left us? Alkinoos Ioannidis, singer and songwriter, says “How the poet resembles this prince (albatross) from the clouds who defy the storm and laugh at the ax, in exile on earth, in the middle of the wild mockery, with the giant’s wings forcing him to go” and lets us travel away.
Heptapyrgion functioned as a prison from 1890 to 1989, when its use was handed over to the Ministry of Culture.
*Anna Mykoniou was born in Thessaloniki, studied French literature at the University of Aristotle in Thessaloniki, received a master’s degree in theater and contemporary literature from the Sorbonne IV in Paris and did her doctoral dissertation at the same university in 20th century poetry.
Since 2015, she is the chair and artistic director of the Cultural Center in the Central Macedonia region.
Marni Hatziemmanouil
