EVENTS

Lyrics – Music – Performance: Eleni-Michaela Sfetsiori

Piano Accompaniment: [Will be announced]

ARTIST STATMENT

The starting point for this creative proposal was not a desire to adapt Golfo, but rather to enter into dialogue with a work that exists simultaneously as living memory and historical trace.

As part of my research, I visited the Manuscripts Department of the National Library of Greece, where I studied the surviving libretto of the operetta version by Georgios Vitalis and Orestis Laskos (1938). Since much of the music has been lost, I did not attempt to reconstruct it. Instead, I identified the images, musical motifs, and recurring poetic symbols that survive in the libretto and used them as the starting point for a new creation.

The recurring references to water, light, and the sun became the central axes of my own dramaturgy. Water is transformed into a musical and poetic leitmotif running throughout the work, symbolising memory, oblivion, choice, and the inevitability of fate. The sun becomes a witness to human love, while light functions as a symbol both of hope and revelation.

At the same time, I explored the folk traditions surrounding the myth through traditional songs associated with Golfo. I approached them not as material to be adapted, but as living voices of a collective memory that continues to accompany the story of the work. The musical language of the composition enters into dialogue with these traditions without reproducing them verbatim, combining them instead with contemporary music-theatre techniques.

Another discovery during my research shaped the dramaturgical form of the work. Having lost his sight, Spyridon Peresiadis dictated his work so that it could be written down and ultimately brought to the stage. This image — of a creator narrating a world that another person records — became, for me, a powerful theatrical core.

This is how the dramaturgical duo “Peresiadis & Scribe” was born. These two characters act as storytellers and creators of myth, bringing the world of Golfo into being on stage before the audience’s eyes. The work thus acquires a metatheatrical dimension, in which the very act of writing becomes part of the narrative.

The choice of the concept album format emerged organically from this process. Each song functions as an autonomous scene while simultaneously forming part of a unified music-theatre composition. Recurring musical themes, the voices of the characters, and symbols drawn from nature gradually weave together the dramaturgical fabric of a new Greek musical.

The eight songs accompanying this proposal do not constitute a completed work, but rather the first chapter of a creative process that is still evolving. My intention is not to revive a lost operetta, but to create a contemporary music-theatre version of Golfo — one that engages in dialogue with its history without being confined by it.

Eleni-Michaela Sfetsiori

CVs

ELENI-MICHAELA SFETSIORI - Phygital storyteller, playwright, actress, musician Eleni-Michaela Sfetsiori is an award-winning actress, writer, singer-songwriter, composer, director, dramatist, translator, and performer. Defining herself as a phygital storyteller, she creates across physical and digital platforms, blending theatre, music, and multimedia to conjure immersive, multi-sensory narratives. She trained in Performing Arts at the University of Strasbourg and holds an Honours degree in Media and Communications with a specialisation in Radio from Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2026, she will complete a second master’s degree in Creative Writing, Theatre and Cultural Industries at the University of the Peloponnese. As a musician, she has a diverse background in classical singing, guitar, piano, and advanced music theory, as well as training in Byzantine, folk, and polyphonic traditions. Her multi-instrumental skills and vocal versatility inform her work as a composer, singer-songwriter, and performer, blending classical foundations with contemporary and traditional influences. Her work has received multiple awards, including 2nd Prize at the BJTC Awards (London, 2019) for her podcast Passe-partout, honoured at the Delphic Cultural Heritage Days (2021) for her musical setting of Angelos Sikelianos’ poetry, and the Eurodram Award for translation (2025) for her bilingual play Οπή/Uncut, praised as “a contemporary work exploring violence, silence, and the female experience through a multi-layered dramaturgy.” In 2026, she was awarded the Greek State Award for Young Playwrights for her play Citrus.