The beginning of the Greek Revolution was conceived to coincide with the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary on March 25. Every year the Greek celebration of Independence remains intertwined with that religious holiday and with Jesus’s Resurrection (March 25 occurs in the middle of Great Lent). Political liberty achieved by the Revolution and freedom from death achieved by the Resurrection have always been deeply connected in the Greek calendar and psyche. It is therefore fitting for a program to combine these world premieres of two works: one about the Greek Revolution, Concerto Grosso Laïko, and another about the revolution that emerged from the quiet prayers in Gethsemane. We will be presenting both world premieres on March 20 and 21, 2026 at Merkin Hall in Manhattan.
The Concerto Grosso Laïko is a celebration of the resilience and indomitable spirit of common people, inspired by the Greek Revolutionary experience. The Concerto Grosso Laïko is divided into three movements – Tripolitsa, Mesolongi, and Navarino – which refer to three notable locations of the Revolutionary War’s struggle: an early major victory, a city’s siege and massacre, and the War’s final victorious episode.
Mark Mazower writes that “the revolution of 1821 had succeeded because beyond the epic and oft-celebrated moments of individual bravery and self-sacrifice, it was fundamentally a story of social endurance in the face of systemic upheaval. It was not so much their victories that gave the Greeks independence as it was their refusal to accept defeat.” Enlightenment ideas of freedom, or simply nationalism, may have motivated Greek leaders to take up arms, but it was the willingness of common people to sacrifice until victory was achieved that produced the Revolution’s success. In 1938, Winston Churchill quoted Alexander the Great’s saying that the people of Asia were slaves because they had not learned to pronounce the word “No.” And a few years later, the Greeks illustrated their affinity for the same word by refusing to surrender to the Fascist and Nazi onslaught on Όχι (“No”) Day. Where did this willingness to sacrifice come from?
Gethsemane provides an answer. It celebrates that same spirit of self-sacrifice in the form of God’s willingness to say “yes” to crucifixion out of love for us. In the Greek language, there are several words that translate as “love”: agape, philia, and eros are the three best known, but divine (or sacrificial) love – storgi – is the one depicted by the figure of Jesus on the cross. The opera takes place in the hour before Jesus is seized. Its theme is the centrality and radical nature of Jesus’s lesson that mankind must learn sacrificial love to be reunited with God. Sacrificial love is not imaginable prior to the Crucifixion, either to the devil, or to Jesus’s disciples, who see it as an obstacle to gaining followers, and who confuse it with weakness. Only by climbing onto the cross can Jesus’s teaching of sacrificial love be understood.
