Maria Farantouri, the contralto who carried Mikis Theodorakis's music through exile and dictatorship, returned to the Royal Festival Hall to mark his centenary.
Maria Farantouri, the lifelong interpreter of Mikis Theodorakis’s songs, returned to the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank on Sunday 1 March 2026. The concert marked the centenary of his birth.
Farantouri was born in Athens in 1947 and sings contralto across two octaves. Theodorakis first recorded her voice in the 1960s.
When the colonels seized power in 1967 and banned his music, she spent the junta years recording his songs in exile across Europe. She took the score he wrote for Pablo Neruda’s Canto General into concert halls worldwide.
In 1971 she recorded Songs and Guitar Pieces with the Australian guitarist John Williams, setting his music to poems by Federico García Lorca. She sat in the Greek Parliament from 1989 to 1993.
At the Royal Festival Hall she led a programme of resistance anthems, songs of love and freedom, and the music for Zorba the Greek, his most widely known score. Greece on Tour presented the evening.
The Estoudiantina Neas Ionias orchestra accompanied her under Andreas Katsigiannis, with bouzouki, santouri, laouto, violin and clarinet.