The completely enigmatic Diamanda Galás with her three-and-a-half octave voice will be touring Australia throughout October. My girlfriend and I saw her on her last Australian tour in 2001 and were transfixed and mesmerized at the stunning performance of this avant garde performer. Now we just gotta decide which of the two Melbourne shows to attend. I’m kinda leaning towards the October 7 performance as that is the night of my birthday and it will be the performance of ‘Defixiones: Orders From The Dead’ - an operatic sacred mass dedicated “to the forgotton and erased of the Armenian, Assyrian, and Pontic Greek genocides that occured in Asia Minor, Pontos, and Thrace between 1914 and 1923,” genocides that the American and Turkish governments refuse to recognise to this day. Like the Eumenides - the mythological creatures charged with administering justice - Galas seeks to pursue the criminal with the memory of his crimes. Note her inclusion of the Turkish poem Hatred published by Hurriyet on the eve of the 1974 invasion of Cyprus, which advocates the large-scale decapitation of the Greek giavouri (infidels).
Defixiones draws its title from the “curse tablets”, the small lead charms engraved with curses that were laid on graves throughout the eastern Mediterranean to discourage desecration. With her fifteenth concert creation, Galas directly engages the Greek heritage that has always - occasionally directly, more often obliquely - informed her work.
The rest of Australia will be treated to the ‘Guilty, Guilty, Guilty’ performance - a mixture of blues, jazz and song-spiel techniques exploring the darker side of life.
Cannot wait!
Australian Tour Dates:
- Friday October 7, Melbourne, Performing - Defixiones: Orders from the Dead, Venue: Hamer Hall
- Monday October 10, Melbourne, Performing - Songs of Exile, Venue: Hamer Hall
- Thursday October 13, Brisbane, Performing - Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Venue: Brisbane Concert Hall QPAC
- Sunday October 16, Adelaide, Performing - Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Venue: Adelaide Town Hall
- Friday October 21, Sydney, Performing - Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Venue: The State Theatre
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