The Requiem for the end of love, a work that marked the artistic creation of the 1990s, marks the highly anticipated reunion of the two emblematic companions of the legendary Ground Team, Dimitris Papaioannou and Giorgos Koumentakis, in a new interpretation by the international maestro Theodoros Kourentzis. The production is realized with the support of a donation from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) to enhance the artistic outwardness of the Greek National Opera.
In 1995, at the Old Power Plant of the Public Power Corporation in Neo Faliro, the Ground Team made a crack in time with the presentation of the performance-installation One Minute of Silence, conceived, directed, and choreographed by Dimitris Papaioannou, with music for the first chapter by Giorgos Koumentakis and for the second by Manos Hadjidakis. With the trauma remaining permanent from the deaths of beloved friends from AIDS and with ‘fear haunting the love life of an entire generation’, Dimitris Papaioannou asked Giorgos Koumentakis to compose a ‘storm of death’ – a requiem for those lost to AIDS. In the same performance, the hesitant hope for life was brought by the Songs of Sin by Manos Hadjidakis, with poetry by Dinos Christianopoulos.
Thirty-one years later, after cycles have opened and closed and paths that are sometimes parallel and sometimes opposite, Dimitris Papaioannou sets up the large ladder of the stage installation at the National Opera and works again from the beginning on the Requiem for the end of love, “one of the strongest musical works of George Koumentakis,” as he himself mentions. The collaboration between the two creators who paved the way for a new stage language in dance, theater, opera, and even for the Ceremonies of the Olympic Games, is complemented by a brilliant conductor, whose name is internationally recognized for his individual interpretations in major symphonic works and operas, Theodore Kurentzis.
