Alexander the Great by Panayoti Karousos
When writing the booklet of my opera, in order to describe the pure, grand nature of Alexander the Great’s personality, I sought the works of antiquity. Inaccessible, invisible – Alexander was everywhere, seeking his Homer, never satisfied by the writers who tried to approach him. The magnitude of his life was underestimated in Plutarch and Arian; it was idealized by the more contemporary philosophers - distant - as Droyzen.
I sought the happy medium and found the most luminous destiny of all humanity, that of a demigod. Because Alexander did not only carry Hellenic Civilization to the borders of the world; he was the cradle him even, and its star, among those of his/her father king Philippe, of the Demosthenes orator, the Aristotle philosopher, shines of a single glare in the sky of the History. By discovering the life of Alexander, one can only be upset by the force and the will relentless of his mother Olympias who was like the obscure face of the star. The High Priestess Olympias has the dark and diabolic beauty of a personality of extreme ritual cruelty, of a divine monster. As much one remains in a dumbfounded stupor in front of the colossal and grotesque Olympias, as much one is seized amazement in front of the dream of Alexander the Great, his dream eternal, always current: fraternity, love, dignity, beauty, humanism and before any heroism. To describe the events binding Alexander his superhuman destiny has, I employed Wagnerian formulas by their leitmotifs melody reason. In addition, I used dissonant harmonies based on an arithmetisation Pythagorian to return the intellectuality of the Hellenistic Era founded by Alexander the Great. The epic atmosphere of the work is based on a dark lyricism.
Alexander lived as a permanent nightmare the event tragedies of the war, which it carried out to reach his supreme goal…
The world premiere of Alexander the Great was in Montreal Canada the 20 October 2007 and the composer Panayoti Karousos gets a half hour standing ovation from the audience. Canadian dramatic mezzo Sophie Laganiere did an amazing work to the titanic role of Queen Olympias. Donald Lavergne as Alexander the Great gave all his emotion.
The opera represented in May 2008 in Chicago Illinois USA with the American Symphony Orchestra of Chicago under maestro David Stech with big success. Critics acclaimed Karousos’s Alexander the Great as the greatest artistic achievement ever made for Greece's greatest hero and from far history’s biggest conqueror.