‘Zorba the Greek’ composer mourned
Political activist was tortured in civil war
ATHENS • Composer Mikis Theodorakis, whose music crossed international boundaries in his captivating score for the film Zorba the Greek, died on Thursday, plunging Greece into three days of mourning.
A towering man with a brooding presence and a shock of wavy hair, Theodorakis’s work evoked a progressive, democratic vision of the world, though his political struggles reflected a darker side of Greece.
As news of his death at home in Athens at the age of 96 swept across the country of 11 million, tributes poured in from across the political spectrum.
“Today we lost a part of Greece’s soul. Mikis Theodorakis, Mikis the teacher, the intellectual, the radical, our Mikis has gone,” said Culture Minister Lina Mendoni.
Theodorakis introduced a carefree image of Greece to the world in the 1960s with “Zorba,” the earthy soundtrack to a movie starring Anthony Quinn as the lovable rogue who dances barefoot on a Cretan beach.
But he also came to epitomize the bitter struggles of class resistance with the passionate intensity of his “Romiosini” (Greekness) cycle of songs that became anthems for the political left.
Praising a man he called the “Universal Greek,” Conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said: “We had all forgotten that he was a mere mortal. But his legacy of music, his political activism and his service to the nation in times of crisis lives on.”
Greece’s Communist party KKE called Theodorakis’s body of work “a constant confrontation with injustice and defeatism, of new struggles and resistance.”
It also released a letter Theodorakis wrote to the party last year in which he stated: “I want to leave this world as a Communist.”
Born on the Greek island of Chios on July 29, 1925, Theodorakis was repeatedly jailed for his beliefs. He was arrested in 1947, accused of being a sympathizer with guerrilla forces in the civil war that broke out soon after the Second World War between right-wing royalists and left-wing popular forces.
Sent to a notorious camp on the island of Makronisos in 1948, he was beaten and tortured, had his legs broken and on one occasion was buried alive.