Katerina Anastasiou talks to Markella about... well... just about everything.

An artistic and intellectual journey merge at the crossroads of conscience. A stream of consciousness dialogue.

K: We first met when you were in your late teens during that transition from conservatory student to professional singer. I recall that first semi-professional appearance, at 17 I believe, with the Oxford Symphony Orchestra in Herodes Atticus with the Parthenon looming prophetically above the theater. Listening to you interpret de Falla that evening, I remember thinking that this girl is mature beyond her years and is meant for great things. Great things were certainly coming in the future and here we are some years later.

What do you remember from those years?

M: Chaos and uncertainty.

K: Really, but you have always seemed so calm and in control.

M: Well, I suppose to a great extent, I didn’t exactly have a normal childhood, whatever that might mean. Shortly before my 13th birthday my father had taken me to the National Conservatory to audition. He had some trouble actually getting the audition because of my age, but he was a very persistent man and believed strongly that this was a necessary step.

The short version of the story is that I sang one folk song followed by some vocalizes at the behest of the jury and the next day found myself going to the conservatory on a full scholarship. I had a naturally rich contralto at that age and they apparently heard something unusual in the voice.

K: That’s rather young to begin college. Were you ready for that?

M: My life changed dramatically and instantly. I still had to go to school for the first half of every day, but from three o’clock until ten I was a college student. And it wasn’t easy. I was ready for the singing but not for the intensity of music theory, history, solfege and piano. Those things were so stressful for me.

It not only changed my life but the life of my family. My father, who was a textiles engineer, would work every day from seven to three and then, because of my age, would sit at the conservatory waiting for me every night. I never would have made it without him. There were so many tears of frustration due to the constant juggling, but he was always a pillar of strength for me.

K: When your teacher, Georgia Georgilopoulou was still alive we would observe her in the first rows during your performances with her look of intense concentration on what you were doing. It was as if she was singing every little phrase with you. What lasting impact has she had on you?

M: That’s really inestimable. My teacher was the absolute center of my life for 15 years. People often stare in disbelief when I mention that, but I only had one teacher. Teacher hopping is much in fashion, especially among the New York crowd, who seem to be searching for a magic elixir to replace good old-fashioned work.

pan style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My teacher was kind and severe. Only through hard discipline in music is one able to rise above the crowd and she was a taskmaster. She was never one to bandy about fake flattery and ‘words of the ass’ as my father used to say. When I deserved a compliment, I would receive it. When I didn’t, we would just work harder. I owe everything to her. I was devastated by her sudden death when I was 28.

K: What were you doing when you were 28?

M: I was working for Sarah Caldwell at the Opera Company of Boston. Actually, the day she died was the same day I met my husband.

K: Sarah Caldwell was one of the more colorful personalities in the opera world. How did your relationship with her come about?

M: Well, Ms. Caldwell was in Greece working on some preliminary work for a production of Cherubini’s Medea to be staged in Boston. Naturally, she was taken care of in Greece by State Department employees of the American Embassy. The U.S. Cultural Attache at that time had been to performances of mine and we had become good friends. When Ms. Caldwell expressed an interest in hearing some Greek singers, my name came up.

In typical Sarah fashion, which means very unusually chaotic and surreal situations, I sang for her - two hours before she hopped - if you can imagine that - on the plane to return to Boston. In the restaurant of the Athens Intercontinental Hotel.

K: That’s hilarious, how did you manage?

M: At the moment, not very well. My pianist had to play on an out-of-tune upright piano and there were people eating.

K: What happened?

M: I sang two arias and she offered me 4 years of contracts.

K: That’s a memorable story. I want to ask you more about the Boston years, but wanted to touch on your association with Tito Gobbi. Gobbi was the pre-eminent baritone on the international stage for several decades and one of Maria Callas’s favorite colleagues. How did you come to meet Gobbi?

M: Well, that is a story that comes with its own share of pain. At least it was painful at the time.

The first Maria Callas International Competition was being held in Athens and the contestants had been screened from a large international pool of contestants. I had been invited and was the youngest competitor.

The jury was made up of a distinguished panel of international figures and Greeks. Tito Gobbi was the head juror and had travelled to Athens with his wife Tilde.

I had made it through the quarter and semi-finals into the finals of the competition and had sung my performance for the finals. The next morning, before the winners had been announced, I received a telephone call from Mrs. Gobbi asking if I could come to meet them in their suite at the Grande Bretagne.

K: Wasn’t that extraordinarily unusual protocol for a competition juror?

M: Well, yes, but listen. I had no idea what was going to happen in the meeting, but as it turned out, for a young girl in her early twenties, unaware of how cutthroat the opera world could be, it was completely devastating.

The Gobbi’s were waiting for me with huge smiles and welcomed me and complimented me on my performances at the competition and then dropped the bomb. I can remember it like it was yesterday:

Maestro Gobbi spoke frankly and earnestly to me explaining that the international jurors unanimously wanted to make me the 1st Prize winner, but all the Greeks were voting against me and had me in last place. Wow, my first huge lesson in the disparity of human nature!

Gobbi went on to say how unfair it was, but that he could do nothing to remedy the situation.

K: I can’t imagine. How could you even pick yourself up after that?

M: I couldn’t. Maestro and Mrs. Gobbi had begged me to come to the awards ceremony which was to be televised nationally and in Europe. I told them that I didn’t think I could after what had happened. And then Maestro said, ‘promise me that you will watch it on television.’

K: And, did you?

M: That’s where the happy ending makes its entrance. I was watching the broadcast with my parents and several friends. They had announced all the winners, when much to the astonishment of the committee, Maestro Gobbi said he had a special announcement to make.

K: This is an exciting tale.

M: Yes, unfortunately, in life not all situations have such a good ending as this. Gobbi announced that he was establishing a special scholarship for the young Greek mezzo that was overlooked by the jury. A scholarship to study dramatic roles with him while traveling with him and his wife.

K: That must have turned into a scandal.

M: Huge scandal. In the end it was the competition organizers and Greek jurors who were humiliated.

But for me, the next three years were wonderful. I lived with the Gobbi’s on their estate in Rome studying most days with Maestro. I sang in all of his public masterclasses in London and in Firenze. What I learned, again was inestimable. Gobbi never messed with my voice, it was all about stage presence and acting, and humanity.

K: That story brings tears to my eyes and I see after so many years it does to your eyes as well.

M: It was a very emotional period.

K: So what happened next. How did all of this help advance your career?

M: Well for one thing, I met many influential people in the business, and that began my long agonizing history with that subspecies commonly known as agents.

K: I know that can be one of the most frustrating aspects of being an artist, placing trust in a agent?

M: They’re all pretty much the same. Not to be trusted. They’re kind of like parasites on the body of the music world. Many of them are failed musicians who mutate into multi-headed creatures with a different face for every occasion.

K: That’s funny.

M: It’s true. Anyway, through Gobbi, one of the most famous impresarios of all time, Gorlinsky courted me. He was quite old at the time and liked to brag about the expensive gifts given him by singers for securing high profile engagements. I was very much a purist at the time and was completely turned off by the level of control he was proposing over my career. So I walked away.

K: That must have been difficult to do.

M: Nothing is difficult when you have the courage of your convictions. I just happened to know myself and know that I wasn’t going to tolerate any kind of oppression. The same holds true today.

K: I have seen so many artists negatively impacted by the destructive modus operandi of many agents over the years. How have you survived?

M: Well, to be fair, there is one agent for whom I will always have a great deal of admiration. Miguel Lerin in Barcelona. Miguel is a highly educated man, with a solid musical training under his belt, unlike most agents. He is a polyglot and one of the most knowledgeable people in the entire business. My husband has always respected him.

As for the others, well let’s just say I prefer to be surrounded by decent human beings. They were not.

K: What was the catalyst that finally gave you access to the upper echelons of the classical world?

M: Well, it was at the beginning of my marriage and Steve and I didn’t have very much money, although things were going alright. He had just travelled to Moscow with Sarah Caldwell, for performances of DiDomenica’s The Balcony in the Bolshoi. Afterwards, we went to Athens for a performance of Aida for the Athens International Festival. I remember we had around $20,000 from the performances, and no money in the bank. So we decided the best thing to do was go on an audition trip through Europe and spend it all.

K: Did that trip yield many contracts?

M: Indirectly. Helga Schmidt, who seemed at the time to be a kind of ‘strong-armed henchwoman’ of Sir Colin Davis, was at my audition at Teatro alla Scala. Davis was about to conduct three highly publicized concert performances of Berlioz’ Les Troyens with the London Symphony at the Barbican. They already had an Italian mezzo booked for the main role of Didon, and asked if I would learn the role just in case.

K: Did they pay you a learning fee since there was no guarantee of performances.?

M: Sure. I don’t recall the details and Steve negotiated everything.

Anyway, I learned the role in less than a month and worked with a French coach 4000 miles away over the telephone. To make a long story short, the powers-that-be didn’t like the Italian mezzo’s French and pushed her out of the engagement.

K: Nice people.

M: The facade only. I stepped in on very short notice and into an atmosphere of neurotic paranoia, one that unfortunately was replicated whenever I subsequently worked with Davis. But the success was huge and all the doors were open, for awhile anyway.

K: You didn’t like working with Colin Davis? He’s one of the most revered conductors in the world.

M: My training was such that I expect certain things from conductors. I have always preferred conductors who were also virtuoso pianists and therefore having the mental capacity to manage huge amounts of musical data simultaneously. There are good conductors who were trained as string players, but I’ve always liked a conductor who, when the orchestra isn’t handy, can sit down and play the score from memory on the piano. Now, that’s a conductor.

K: But can your average audience member tell the difference.

M: Probably not, but the orchestra can. Many conductors, unfortunately, learn their music by conducting with a recording and making lots of pretty and colorful markings in the score. That style doesn’t suit me. I prefer the real thing. How many times have we stayed on the same hotel floor with a famous conductor only to hear a recording playing over and over again in his room? More than I care to reveal.

K: So who were your favorite conductors?

M: I really liked Mariss Jansons. I sang quite a few times with him with the Oslo Philharmonic. Kent Nagano is always superb. Andrew Davis was solid. Richard Hickox as well. Haitink was fine. Semyon Bychkov was excellent. Zubin Mehta was fun, albeit a bit mechanical. Christoph von Dohnanyi was meticulous and mostly dependable, although he made a fairly huge meter change mistake during one performance of Bluebeard in Salzburg that almost stopped the performance. Seiji Ozawa seemed machine-like and superficial. There are some good Greek conductors - Lukas Karytinos, who has never gotten as much attention internationally as he deserves - and a young conductor that I sang Kalomiris with at Greek National Opera a few years ago.

K: Conductors that you wished you had worked with?

M: Wolfgang Sawallisch, Christoph Eschenbach - both excellent pianists as well. Lorin Maazel. I had a contract with Maazel in Munich that didn’t work out because our personalities clashed. If I believed in reincarnation, I might suspect some conflict in a previous life. Ha.

K: And what about stage directors? I know you’ve always been enthusiastic about Robert Wilson’s work.

M: The summer we spent working with Robert Wilson on Bluebeard’s Castle was probably one of my best working experiences ever. From my entire career, those were my favorite performances. I learned much from him.

K: Other directors?

M: Oh sure, but usually I found the ones not carrying the burden of their fame to be much more intriguing.

K: You’ve sung with so many people over the years. Were there some for which you felt a special connection?

M: Jessye Norman was one of the true ladies in the business. More could learn from her grace and dignity on and off the stage. Shirley Verrett likewise was a wonderful colleague and person.

I’ve had many wonderful colleagues. With some a bond would form in combatting a dictatorial conductor, which, by the way, never worked very well on me. Others, from enduring 2 months of rehearsals from an incompetent stage director. I had some great friendships from my early Boston days that I cherish to this day.

Tenors could be a problem with that ego thing, but I have sung with tenors that were likable and simpatico. My favorite colleagues are those from over the years in Greece.

K: I’ve heard many people ask in recent years, “What happened to Markella Hatziano?” Why did you cut back on your classical and opera engagements?

M: One reason and one reason only. Our daughter.

K: Children of famous performers often feel that they are not the highest priority of their parents. What do you feel is different about the way you’ve approached motherhood?

M: Let me say, that I’ve observed many parent-child relationships in my business. Some healthy, and many, if not most, not. Many children spend many months of the year in boarding schools seeing their parents only sporadically. Many of the children don’t relate at all to what their parents do.

When I became a mother, I wanted to be a mother. I didn’t want a nanny changing the diapers, feeding and nursing my child. I wanted to do it myself. It wasn’t always easy, but I’ve done that.

K: Did that philosophy impact your relationships in the business?

M: Of course. When Alexandra was born she was 5 weeks premature with some respiratory problems. When she was 2 months, she required hospitalization in the pediatric intensive care unit for RSV.

One month later, I was scheduled to return to Australia for some performances of La Damnation de Faust. I explained my circumstances to various managers and the company and no one really seemed to care. I broke my contract.

K: I would have done the same thing.

M: Yes, but many in the business would not have. Humanity has slipped through the cracks of the business. I prefer to hold on to mine rather than deal with people like that.

Anyway, at the time I had various contracts booked three years ahead and I selectively withdrew from many of them, giving adequate notice to find suitable replacements.

K: And Alexandra recovered successfully?

M: Yes, although because of that, colds can be rather difficult for her and continue to be so.

K: You travelled with your daughter quite a lot before she started school. I recall seeing her sitting with your husband at a performance in Athens when she was 3. Does she remember those performances?

M: She does some of them, but, there are archival videos of many that she watches occasionally and always many photographs of which she is ever present.

We cut down severely on the traveling when she started school.

K: Is that around the time you began to explore new ways to manifest your artistic abilities?

M: Well, yes, although it was a long gradual evolution. For me, even being somewhat of a musical purist all my life, music is first and foremost, about communication.

Over the years, I enjoyed mostly the students and younger people who would come back stage to greet me after a performance. The ones who paid 8 euros for a standing room only ticket with a partial view of the stage. They were hungry for the art and would sacrifice literal food for figurative food. These were the people I could reach. Contrast these with the wealthy society class who go for all the wrong reasons, primarily it seems, to be seen sporting their new diamonds and jewelry.

K: Do you consider opera an elitist art form?

M: Not only that, I don’t consider it especially relevant in any significant sense to the 21st century. It’s not self-supporting; nobody has ever heard of a profit-driven business model in the classical world. It relies on alms.

There are better ways to communicate musically and theatrically.

K: And here you are, after reaching the pinnacles of the classical world, all of a sudden immersed in pop music, electronica and dance music, and pursuing it with the energy of a teenage girl. How exciting and perhaps even unprecedented.

M: I’m not sure about the unprecedented part, but every day is invigorating.

K: Do you recall when you really decide to take the plunge?

M: I do. It was in December of 2006. Steve and I had been recording a cd of some Liszt songs, never released, and were listening to the masters, lamenting the fact that we would probably only sell several thousand copies if we were lucky. Afterward Steve was sitting at the piano improvising while waiting for Alexandra to start her daily violin lesson and slowly over a 20 minute period the improv morphed into a full fledged pop song.

I told him to record it and write it down before he forgot it. That was the beginning of a new life.

K: Indeed. Where did it go from there?

M: For me the going was slow. I was more an observer for the first several months. But for Steve, the transformation was overwhelming. He went from his routine of practicing the piano 7 hours per day, to composing in his makeshift lab 20 hours per day. His output was prodigious.

K: Had he ever been active as a composer prior to this?

M: Yes, but not for a lot of years. He had trained at the conservatory as a pianist and composer. At one moment he had to decide between going to USC to study film scoring or to continue trying to play the Hammerklavier with Beethoven’s original metronome markings. He chose the latter.

K: It must have been like opening the door on 20 years of suppressed ideas?

M: It was similar to that. Although we have only released several digital singles at this time, God Delusion and Born Again, he has composed and written the lyrics for over 80 songs since December of ’06.

K: Any hints of him being a lyricist before then?

M: Yes, he would like to improvise dirty limericks.

The lyrics actually stunned me more than the music. Not just because I had never seen that side of him, but because I could see a lifetime of acquired knowledge being poured into his writing.

K: I assume both of you are avid readers?

M: I am an avid reader. He is an obsessive reader. From the day we met, there was rarely any downtime with him, either studying a foreign language, reading science and philosophy books. On airplanes, on the toilet, in the mall, while he’s practicing. He’s one of audible.com’s best customers. His ipod is always clipped to his shirt streaming non-fiction.

K: I understand he has a rather extensive knowledge of religious texts?

M: He began seriously studying comparative religion shortly after we married and we would have hours of wonderful conversation over the subjects. I suppose it began as a quest for some kind of spiritual truth. By the mid 00s he had read virtually all of the major holy texts of the world religions, the Tao te Ching, which was one of our favorites, Bhagavad Gita, Koran, etc. He has plodded completely through the Bible at least 4 times with different translations and even read the New Testament in the original Greek.

K: I know from your travels, that you and your husband have friends all over the world and presumably from a wide range of belief systems. How do you manage to negotiate those treacherous waters even in basic conversation. How does tolerance fit in?

M: I’m sure you’ve heard the adage, “love the sinner, hate the sin.” How about modifying that to say, “love the believer, hate the belief.” It’s just a thought.

Seriously, though, many of our friends are more liberal in their thinking, although some are very conservative. Sometimes it’s best just to make music and avoid words.

K: That’s like your crossover song coming out: Beyond Words.

M: Profound?

K: How has this familiarity with religious texts and other cultures impacted both of you?

M: I would say, in the most profound way, but actually it has been in the most simple way.

K: Meaning?

M: Well, the earth is bulging at the seams as it attempts to accommodate nearly 7 billion people. 2 billion of those call themselves Christians, 1.5 billion Muslims, 900,000 Hindu. Chinese religions, Buddhism, Indigenous and African religions all number in the 100 millions, followed by the millions making up the stew of other religions, Sikhism, Judaism, Baha’i, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Scientology and so on and so forth ad nauseam.

Most practitioners seem to think that because of the geographical coincidence of their birth that they happened to stumble into the one true religion and all other religions are false and billions of other people are wrong and they are right. Imagine the arrogance.

The concept is humbling and intimidating for many.

K: I’ve never quite heard it put that way, but it makes sense. I’ve also read that the nonreligious/secular make up over 1 billion people.

M: That’s significant. In the meantime, in the 21st century, wars and conflicts abound surrounding these religious ‘truths.’ It may not be politically correct to label them religious conflicts, but the list is long.

K: For instance?

M: Kashmir, between Hindus and Muslims, Serbian Orthodox Catholics and Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo, Israelis and Palestinians, Ireland between Protestants and Catholics, etc, and no one can deny that there is an overall de facto war between Islam and Christianity.

K: It’s like a war for people’s minds.

M: Land and natural resources are secondary and even a by-product. The battle is to control the zeitgeist. Whoever ends up controlling the zeitgeist will control the land and natural resources.

K: I’m afraid we’re running out of time. So what do you call yourself, if anything?

M: Markella, and I’m very pleased to meet you.

K: You know what I mean.

M: I was serious.

K: I understand, but most people need labels to understand anything.

M: I don’t particularly like labels and I especially despise those that define one as something they are not.

K: Do you like humanist?

M: I consider myself a humanist.

K: What does that mean to you?

M: It means that, first and foremost, I care about people. I live my life to help others. When I am asked to help someone, I try to do my best to help them. When I am unable, I find the feeling devastating.

K: But what is your motivation for helping people?

M: Empathy and reciprocity, to me, are the key elements of morality and ethics. In fact, the golden rule, more properly known as the ethic of reciprocity is as old as the human animal itself. It has been part of every major belief system and in many cases thousands of years before Christianity even appeared.

I help others, because I can imagine what it would be like to be in their position. I would hope that if I were in the same position someday, someone might help me as well.

One of my favorite quotes of Albert Einstein is: “If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.”

K: Is the Einstein quote your label?

M: In a way, yes.

K: John Lennon pushed the envelope with his lyrics. I’m thinking, for instance of the lyrics to Imagine.

M: One of my favorite songs of all time. I’ve thought of doing a modern version, but the licensing with Yoko is very difficult.

K: I would like to hear that.

M: Actually we’ve done it already.

K: May I hear it? But what I wanted to ask is, how do you relate your music, and Styvyn’s music, to the John Lennon concept.

M: John Lennon changed the zeitgeist. In a way he has enabled and empowered musicians to say things through their music that would fall on deaf ears if said in a speech or lecture.

K: You told me earlier that you are reluctant to mention titles of songs about to be released, but I am so curious. What is next?

M: I think it’s very powerful, both the lyrics and music. It’s really more of an intense dance tune and it’s really been fun working on it in the studios. We all went to Red Rocks Amphitheater in Denver this summer for a techno concert to promote some music to some big DJs. It was inspired by that experience.

K: I can’t wait.

M: You don’t have to. Press that button over there.