(HCS)--On Saturday evening, 8 October 2011, the Mytilinian village of Vatoussa hosted a musical program in memory of Daniel Pearl in its Metamorphosis Theatre, "Harmony for Humanity," as a tribute to the slain international journalist Daniel Pearl. Developed by one of the island's best known musical legends, soprano Ioanna Karvelas, the two-hour program featured operatic excerpts from European and Greek composers. Karvelas trained, directed, and performed along with the soloists of Opera Lesvos, who presented selections from the operatic works of Bizet, Verdi, and Gian Carlo Menotti, along with a selection of lieder by Greek composers including Kalomiris, Riadis, Petridis and others. Songs by Theodorakis and Hatzidakis were also on the program.

Rounding out this special event was a section representing the genre Greek Folk music, originating in areas around the Black Sea and Asia Minor, performed by an ensemble named "Treis laloun 'n' the band" which uses medieval instruments and specializes in collecting traditional, anonymous compositions. The evening concluded with two Byzantine Chants rarely performed in the standard Orthodox Church Liturgy, executed by Cantor Panagiotis Maniatis, Lambadarios of the Metropolis Church of Mytilene, Lesvos. The pianist was Lia Kefala, Chorus Master of the Municipal Chorus of Mytilene, Lesvos.

In discussing her development of the musical program, Karvelas chose to include works by Greek composers less well-known by western musicians and audiences. She wrote that "the Greek National School of Composers flowered nearly 50 years later than other European National Schools which began to appear around the middle of the 19th century. This is because, for circa 400 years, Greece was under the yoke of the Ottoman Empire. Lesvos and the Northern Aegean were freed as recently as 1919! Much of the Greek music which . . . [was] presented has been written by Greek composers of impressive accomplishment who have travelled abroad in troubled times, to wit, between the two world wars, in order to study and master the Western Classical Music Tradition with great European composers, yet have remained unjustly undiscovered. Many of the songs which are unpublished and still in hand-written manuscript form, . . . [I] have procured from the relatives and descendants of the composers."

Karvelas has come to be known as the ambassador of Greek classical music, always performing along with her theatre engagements concerts which present a wealth of compositions of Greek composers, beginning with the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Lincoln Center in New York as well as in Germany, Austria, Poland, Bulgaria and the Ukraine and the Crimea. In 2009 she starred in "A Celebration of Greek Music" presented at Sanders Theatre at Harvard University. She specializes in the dramatic roles of Verdi, such as Lady Macbeth, which she has recorded in Poland with the Polish National Radio Orchestra, with Maestro William Yannuzzi conducting, the roles of Abigaille (Nabucco), Elisabetta (Don Carlos), Leonora (Trovatore and Forza del destino), Puccini's Turandot and Tosca, and the Wagnerian heroines.

Considered by her colleagues a Master Trainer, she has been invited by many institutions to hold master classes on vocal technique and interpretation of standard operatic repertory and to perform rarely performed song cycles.

In 2000 she founded the "Opera Lesvos" troupe, a truly pioneering venture for a Greek province, a group whose work and training she continues to direct. Karvelas has collaborated frequently with Garabedian who is Director of the California Opera Association in Fresno, California, serving as Artistic Advisor and Historian, giving master classes and lectures on the history of opera and great opera singers of the past and present. Since 2005 she has also served as "Artist in Residence" of the University of Indianapolis, Athens Campus.

For more information about Karvelas, see her website at the URL http://www.lesvos.com/karvelas/page1.html and also her webpage at the site for Daniel Pearl World Music Days at http://www.danielpearlmusicdays.org/artist_detail.php?id=3984 .