A voyage into the Levant – Latinitas Nostra, Athens Festival

Conceived by
Andreas Linos
Markellos Chryssicos
Texts by
Thomas Dallam
Thomas Coryat
George Sandys
Henry BlountNarrator
Spyros Sakkas
LATINITAS NOSTRA
Andreas Linos
Electra Miliadou
Nikoleta Chatzopoulou
Iason Ioannou
Dimitris Tigkas, violas da gamba
Thodoris Kitsos, lute
Markellos Chryssicos, harpsichord, organ
Nikos Spanos, countertenorApostolos Tsardakas, qanun
Evgenios Voulgaris, yaylı tanbur, vocals
Giannis Messalas, yaylı tanbur
Sergios Voulgaris, percussion
Thymios Atzakas, oud
Nikos Paroulakis, ney

In 1599, the young Thomas Dallam hurriedly set out on a journey into the unknown, delivering a church organ to the sultan Mehmet III as a gift from Queen Elizabeth I. Like Rimbaud in Ethiopia, many English travellers were destined to meet the Other in the Levant. On the trail of this distant journey, we chose the Lachrimæ collection by that master composer of Elizabethan melancholy, John Dowland, as our “sweet day of return”. On the opposite end is the secular Ottoman music – le dérèglement de tous les sens (“the derangement of all the senses”, in the words of Rimbaud). Leaving from London and headed for Istanbul, East and West are brought together through the accounts of their journeys…
Markellos Chryssicos
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