Panayoti Karousos on Alexander the Great

The Hellenic Tetralogy after Prometheus and The Olympic Flame continuous with Alexander the Great. It does not have there words to describe the pure splendor which of Alexander the Great’s personality since his birth. To write the booklet of my opera, I sought in the works of antiquity has today. Inaccessible, invisible, Alexander was everywhere, seeking his Homer, never satisfied by the writers who tried to approach him. Its size was underestimated in Plutarque and Arian because the proximity; it was idealized by the more contemporary philosophers - distant - as Droyzen. I sought the happy medium and found the most luminous destiny of all humanity, that of an attractive demigod. Because Alexander did not only carry Hellenic Civilization at the borders of the world; he was the cradle him even, and its star, among those of his/her father king Philippe, of the Demosthenes orator, the Aristotle philosopher, shines of a single glare in the sky of the History. By discovering the life of Alexander, one can only be upset by the force and the will relentless of his mother Olympias who was like the obscure face of the star. The High Priestess Olympias has the dark and diabolic beauty of a personality of extreme ritual cruelty, of a divine monster. As much one remains dumb of stupor in front of the colossal one and grotesque Olympias, as much one is seized amazement in front of the dream of Alexander the Great, his dream eternal, always current: fraternity, love, dignity, beauty, humanism and before any heroism. To describe the events binding Alexander his superhuman destiny has, I employed Wagnerian formulas by their leitmotifs melody reason. In addition, I used dissonant harmonies based on an arithmetisation Pythagorian to return the intellectuality of the Hellenistic Era founded by Alexander the Great. The epic atmosphere of the work is based on a dark lyricism. Alexander lived as a permanent nightmare the event tragedies of the war, which it carried out to reach his supreme goal... Quite to the contrary of Jesus, such as it will appear in my next opera, the Fire of the Catharsis or The Light of Christianity.