“Sound Portraits” journeys into the poetic world of Odysseas Elytis, presented and edited by Stavroula Karali, with Giorgos Kostopoulos on sound.
Broadcast in three installments on Voice of Greece, ERT’s international radio service, the tribute explores the Nobel laureate’s life, poetry, and reflections through his verse set to music, revealing the deep connection between his work and music.
The first episode, on Tuesday, 13 October, focuses on Elytis’s life and development as a poet. It traces his childhood and youth, his early literary explorations and association with the Generation of the ’30s, his experience of war, the emergence of his distinctive poetic voice, and the international recognition that culminated in the 1979 Nobel Prize in Literature. His poems set to music bring to life key moments in his life and work, in which light, the sun, the sea, the Aegean, and the natural landscape of Greece are recurring presences.
The second episode, on Tuesday, 20 October, explores “Open Papers,” a collection of Elytis’s essays, writings, and reflections on poetry, art, and life. Through his thoughts and personal recollections, the program offers insight into how he understood the world, the Greek language, artistic creation, and the role of poetry. Passages from his writings enter into a dialogue with his poems set to music, revealing different facets of his thought.
The third and final episode, on Tuesday, 27 October, the eve of Greece’s national anniversary, is devoted to “Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign.” One of the most significant works of modern Greek poetry, it was inspired by Elytis’s experience on the Albanian front. Through Notis Mavroudis’s musical setting, the program follows a young man who loved life and found himself confronted with the brutality of war. Youth, love, and the beauty of life are set against death and mourning, while the figure of the mother and the anguish of loss reveal the poem’s deeply human dimension.
Throughout the tribute, listeners will hear Elytis’s poetry set to music by leading Greek composers who brought a new dimension to his verse, including Mikis Theodorakis, Giannis Markopoulos, Linos Kokotos, Dimitris Lagios, Notis Mavroudis, and Dimitris Papadimitriou.
Three radio encounters with Odysseas Elytis—a journey through his life and poetry, into his reflections and onward to historical memory, through the verses that became songs.
Produced and presented by Stavroula Karali
Sound engineer: Giorgos Kostopoulos
Broadcast: Tuesdays, 13, 20 & 27 October 2026, at 22:00 Athens time, on Voice of Greece.
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