World premiere of Cypriot composer’s Weeping Madonnas

An oratorio by Cypriot composer Marios Joannou Elia pays tribute to the mothers of the missing people of Cyprus and its performance on Wednesday at the Presidential Palace marks more than just its world premiere. The commemorative event marks the 1974 coup and the Turkish invasion and is organised by the Republic of Cyprus which commissioned the composer to create this large-scale musical composition.

Titled Weeping Madonnas, the piece is an oratorio for lyrical and laiko singers, a mixed youth choir and byzantine choir, a symphony orchestra, a percussion ensemble and ecclesiastical objects, a riflemen group and electronic sounds. On the occasion of the 1974 events, the pain and sorrow of the mother becomes a universal and timeless symbol in Weeping Madonnas. The oratorio attempts to express in music the innermost essence and emotions of the grieving mother of the missing person as if a contemporary Madonna.

The work integrates into the depths of suffering a thematic core of words from ancient tragedy, ecclesiastical hymnography, folk and modern poetry. The music unites the Cypriot dialect, ancient Greek, the demotic and modern Greek language in a path of a single collective narrative.

“The thread of this path is the pure condition of love,” as Joannou Elia said, “the one that makes the Virgin Mary the ultimate symbol of eternal motherhood, with whom the mother of every missing person identifies, expecting redemption as the result of a consciousness, reflective and insightful.”

The oratorio is divided into three parts; A rhomphaia pierces the soul, Washing the bones with wine and tears and Mum, I’m back! Bringing the piece to life is soprano Myrsini Margariti, Yiannis Dionysiou on laiko song, four members of the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra, the Nicosia Music Lyceum Choir, the Saint John of Damascus Choir of the Holy Archbishopric of Cyprus, Saint Spyridon Byzantine Choir of the Holy Bishopric of Trimithounta and the Riflemen Group of the National Guard.

Also included in the performance are 16 poetry readings of the works of poets such as Dionysios Solomos, Yannis Ritsos, Nikiforos Vrettakos, Euripides, Maria Polydouri, Costas Montis and Kostas Gouliamos. Opening the evening and in an effort to signify the importance of the event and its relevance to tragic moments in history, is a speech by the President of the Republic of Cyprus.

Weeping Madonnas

Oratorio composed by Marios Joannou Elia to mark the anniversary of the invasion of Cyprus. July 20. Presidential Palace, Nicosia. 8.30pm. Free