GREEK SOPRANO ARDA MANDIKIAN PASSED AWAY
The Greek soprano Arda Mandikian, who has died aged 85, was a powerful presence on stage or concert platform, appearing to be much taller than she really was. Her face was not only beautiful but awe-inspiring, like an ancient statue, with a noble nose that seemed to start in the depths of her forehead. Of Armenian Greek stock, she was born in what was historically Smyrna, now Izmir, on Turkey's Aegean coast.
Arda studied at the Athens Conservatory with Elvira de Hidalgo and Alexandra Trianti. Two English friends, James Matthews and Alan Collingridge, brought her to London in 1948. The following year she sang at Morley college, Lambeth, and later recorded, for HMV, half a dozen Delphic hymns that had been discovered in 1893. They dated back to the first century, were etched in stone and miraculously contained vocal notation. The hymns brought her into contact with the composer Egon Wellesz, who taught at Oxford University and was an expert in Byzantine music.
Also at Oxford, Jack Westrup, a professor of music, heard her and engaged her to sing Dido in Berlioz's epic opera The Trojans, which was staged for the first time in its entirety by the Oxford University opera club, directed by Westrup in 1950.
The following year she took the title role in a comic opera by Wellesz called Incognita, and in 1952 returned to The Trojans for a recording under the baton of Hermann Scherchen, released three years later. She sounds every inch the tragic Carthaginian queen, and her singing in Dido's death scene has surely never been eclipsed, even by Janet Baker. She then sang the Sorceress in a 1953 recording of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas - a Gramophone review finding her "sufficiently spiteful" - with Kirsten Flagstad as Dido.
Arda's first three roles at the Royal Opera House came in successive months: as one of the nieces in Britten's Peter Grimes in November 1953; as Musetta in Puccini's La Bohème that December; and in the title role of Rimsky-Korsakov's Le Coq d'Or in January 1954. She also sang Handel at Sadler's Wells, and Britten composed the part of the ghost Miss Jessel for her in his The Turn of the Screw (1954, with a recording the following year). With his understanding of voices, he wrote a part that sounds like Arda, whoever sings it.
She specialised in French song. I recall in particular an outstanding account of Berlioz's Les Nuits d'Été at the Wigmore Hall, London. Although her voice was at its best in slow music, she managed to shine in the quicksilver brilliance of Britten's Les Illuminations.
She was an outspoken critic of the Greek junta of 1967-1974, and for that reason her career was hampered. Offers from abroad were turned down since she feared that if she left Greece, she might not be allowed to return, and would not then be able to look after her ailing mother and her stepfather.
After the generals had gone, Arda went regularly to London until a recent deterioration in her health. From 1974 for eight years she acted as assistant director of the new opera centre in Athens, working with her great friend Christos Lambrakis.
A good friend, she was warm and sympathetic - a dab hand at cooking a moussaka. She was extremely sensitive, which made sitting with her in an audience hazardous. A death on stage would induce loud sobs, a cinematic shoot-out would cause her to keel over as if she herself had been shot, and after a performance of Schubert's Winterreise by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau she took to her bed almost paralysed with melancholy for two whole days. There were strong relationships in her life, but no marriages.
Arda Mandikian, born 1 September 1924; died 8 November 2009, guardian.co.uk reported.
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The Greek soprano Arda Mandikian, who has died aged 85, was a powerful presence on stage or concert platform, appearing to be much taller than she really was. Her face was not only beautiful but awe-inspiring, ...
GREEK SOPRANO ARDA MANDIKIAN PASSED AWAY
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- 1967 Solemn inauguration in Yerevan of the Genocide Monument. It is dedicated to the memory of the one million victims of the Armenian Genocide committed by the Turks - starting in 1915.
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- 1989 The USSR Supreme Soviet liquidates its Volsky Committee in Artsakh.
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