For Zacharias Karounis, “the art of the sigh is the traditional amanes.” It is a definition this important performer has carried within him for years. It is an observation that seems to capture the spirit of Giorgos Koumentakis’s entire new work, “So Many Times I Was So Close.” The restraint of Constantine P. Cavafy and the sigh of the amanes, along with bodies, sounds, and moving sculptures, offer a new reading of the poetic greatness of the renowned Alexandrian.
Four of his poems set to music in the style of the amanes, nine dancers from the Greek National Opera Ballet, three choreographers, two music ensembles, and a moving sculptural installation make up the new work by the artistic director of the Greek National Opera. At the center of this multifaceted universe is the voice of Zacharias Karounis, who performs Cavafy’s words on stage through the idiom of the amanes, accompanied by ison drones from dancers and musicians. Speaking to us shortly before the premiere, the singer opened the door to a creative journey full of twists, fear, revelation, and, as he admitted himself, many moments when his voice “broke.”
When Words Are Not Enough
For Zacharias Karounis, the meeting of two seemingly mismatched worlds can create a common space for expressing emotion. “There comes a point where words are not enough to express emotion. The traditional amanes can take a single syllable and open up an entire emotional world around it. On the other hand, the restraint and inwardness of Cavafy’s language create exactly the ideal conditions for words to transform and travel down other secret paths of the mind, paths we may never have imagined existed. Emotion is not explained in Cavafy’s poems. It shouts in silence, and that is exactly where the amanes meets his words.”
Speaking about the staging, where dancers and musicians accompany him live with ison drones, the performer referred to his long and personal relationship with this practice. He noted that he knows it well from the Byzantine chanting tradition, with which, as he put it, he has “a physical relationship.”
He revealed that before he ever chanted his own first musical phrase, at the age of nine in the village where he grew up, he had to hold the ison for three full years beside the elderly lead cantor of his church. That is why he does not experience the ison as a simple musical background, but, as he described it, as “a cosmic vibration that warns or prepares your body for something important.”
In this sense, he feels that he, the dancers, and the musicians are members of a single body that vibrates and produces emotion, carrying Cavafy’s poetry and Koumentakis’s music, sometimes with pain, sometimes with effort, and sometimes with complete devastation, as he said.
The artistic director of the Greek National Opera has also said that he asks for “a voice that does not break.” How difficult is it for a performer to control emotion in such a charged genre? “Controlling emotion was my great nightmare. Giorgos Koumentakis and I held many long rehearsals, just the two of us, before I met the musicians and before I had even heard the melody. The melody was born in rehearsals, from the words themselves. The composer already had it in his mind and revealed it to me day by day, in a rehearsal process that was an incredible experience for me. So when such a gifted and natural composer is beside you, guiding you, the difficulties become easier. For my voice not to ‘break’ and to learn to control emotion, you can be sure it ‘broke’ many times in rehearsals.”
How the Voice Fits In
The performer and cantor also gives an interesting answer about how his voice fits with the unusual combination of sounds, such as the santouri, saxophones, and percussion: “I would say my voice lies somewhere between these worlds. After all, as a singer I have moved between Byzantine chant, folk and popular song, and contemporary work. So I did not try to adapt my voice to the instruments. I tried to open my emotional and perceptual antennae and find my place each time within this universe I was encountering for the first time.
You know, because I grew up in a village, I learned to observe a lot. In one of the rehearsals, while I had let myself listen and translate every sound from the instruments and the percussion, watching the set change as I tried to exist and articulate Cavafy’s poetry, I suddenly turned my gaze and saw Koumentakis with his right hand raised, counting 4/4 in the air while looking at the stage. It was as if he were ‘crossing’ the space, as if he had taken a thread and a needle and was sewing the distances between us. That is how my voice fits in, along with ‘the voices’ of everyone involved in this performance.”
