"Athen's Voice" interview
23 April 2007

1. You have been part of big “mainstream” productions and at the same time you have developed your own provocative projects. How are these two combined and through which persona do you prefer expressing your artistic individuality?

My own projects are obviously the ones that I prefer but at the same time I haven't got the guts to turn down the opportunity to work with people I admire. I am glad of the fact that I work on both the underground circuit and the mainstream one and manage to keep my credibility intact in both. I guess this is due to the fact that the mainstream projects in which I partecipated always had "weird" elements about them and that my own projects come from the heart. There is a consistency that everyone respects.

2. Could you tell us some details about your collaboration with the composer Othon Mataragas and particularly the ideas behind the projects Digital Angel, Viv od Da and Greater Feast Massacre?

And many more new pieces. I have never admired and loved anyone in equal measure and to such an extent as Othon. We met two and a half years ago. At the time I was doing the musical "Chicago" in London's West End. On a Saturday night, after the show, I went to sing my own electronic "opera" at London's (in)famous Club Kaos. A very avant garde (and secret) club for lovers of the "alternative arts". It doesn't get more decadent than that! Othon was in the audience and after the show came to visit me in my dressing room. We have spent the past two and a half years almost constantly together.

About the ideas behind the pieces: It would be better to ask Othon. From my part I can say that, as the first pieces he wrote for me are of religious nature (but in a critical way), he needed a voice that could express that "otherworldliness", a voice that could be extremely masculine and hyper-feminine and at times androginous. We played with many ideas, concepts and sounds and we came up with the final result. He has also written for me songs that are less operatic. I treat all of his pieces as mini-plays as I feel they all have a very theatrical nature.

3. You call yourself artiste extraordinaire. What are the sources and your inspiration for this unique artistic blend of yours? For example, what do you feel you have in common with the castrati of the past?

An "artiste extraordinaire" was in the old times a performer that did novelty acts in the Variety circuit: Magicians, clowns, acrobats. It became fashionable at the end of the 19th Century to use that title even for artists who had nothing extraordinary about them at all (Ernesto laughs). So I put it on my business card as a joke, as an homage to those old predecessors of mine and to express the fact that I don't consider myself to be an actor/singer but more of a Vaudevillian. I started off in Sicilian kabarett and the ghosts of my early shows haunt everything I do. I consider the plays that I have written or produced ("The Veiled Screen", for example) as dramatized Variety acts.

With the castrati I feel that I have a lot in common. As one of the straplines of my show "True or Falsetto? A Secret History of the Castrati" says: "It takes balls to sing without them!". You need to be stronger when you are different. But the conversation on castrati is a long and complex one, have you got another 48 hours?

4. Do you feel that new approaches to classical and opera music today are possible to help them become more popular and accepted on a larger scale? Do you think that your experimental works, with the contribution of internet, can be popular outside the underground/ avant-garde scene?

I don't think so and I don't think it's got anything to do with the way the music is approached by the artists. Our society is obsessed by realism... the masses, I mean. Television in the past 50 years has taken away from them their ability to suspend their disbelief, their desire to dream. They find themselves demanding REAL, demanding PLAUSIBLE, demanding USUAL. This automatically excludes Opera, as on the surface it is the essence of the illusion, of the impossible.

I am too much of an entertainer to say NO to whatever audience wants to embrace my shows but, to be honest, right now, I am perfectly happy with the appreciation of the underground/avant-garde scene.

5. What kind of performance should we expect in Athens? Is it going to be something close to a cabaret show or something different?

It will be a dark and twisted classical music recital with a deranged virtuoso pianist/composer and a basse/baritone/tenor/alto/mezzosoprano/soprano artiste extraordinaire!