Mikis Theodorakis

Among Greece’s most celebrated composers stands Mikis Theodorakis, a troubadour whose catalog spans numerous symphonies and cantatas along with several ballets, operas, and popular songs, among them the celebrated “Zorba the Greek” theme later popularized by Herb Alpert’s instrumental recording. Born in 1925 on the island of Chios, he began composing at an early age, assembling his own choir and delivering his debut performance when he turned seventeen. During World War II he fought in the resistance, then pursued formal training at the Athens Conservatory and later at the Paris Conservatory under Olivier Messiaen. Several symphonies emerged from his pen in the closing years of the 1950s, after which he returned to Greece intent on fusing his academic training with the traditional music of his childhood. Following a period spent scoring films, he supplied the score for the 1964 screen version of Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel Zorba the Greek. When a fascist regime seized power in 1967, Theodorakis went into hiding, organized an underground resistance cell, and defied the authorities’ prohibition against performing or hearing his work. Captured and banished to an internment camp, he owed his 1970 release to an international campaign that enlisted Leonard Bernstein, Dmitri Shostakovich, Arthur Miller, and Harry Belafonte. While still barred from Greece he traveled widely through the 1970s, presenting thousands of concerts that established him as the foremost emissary of Greek music abroad. Once the junta fell he entered the restored parliament and assumed the post of general musical director for the symphony orchestra and chorus of Hellenic Radio and Television. On September 2, 2021, at the age of ninety-six, Mikis Theodorakis suffered a fatal cardiac arrest at his Athens residence.