Echoes of Heritage: Alexandra Sapan’s Journey Through Three Greek Songs

Biography

Alexandra Sapan debuted operatically singing Pamina in Die Zauberflöte with Orlando Opera and The Beijing Music Festival, Zerlina in Don Giovanni with Taconic Opera, Musetta in La Bohème with Orlando Opera, Mdms. Silberklang in The Impresario with Opera Florham, Amina from Bellini’s La sonnambula with Calvià Opera Mallorca, and her Carnegie Hall debut with pianist Maestra Enza Ferrari.  As a featured soloist at Opera Hong Kong’s Inauguration Concert, she sang arias from La Traviata and Don Giovanni and also sang Papagena in Die Zauberflöte for the Macau International Festival of Music.  She was invited to sing with Wheaton College’s Festival of Voices portraying Dvořák’s Rusalka and songs of Brahms, Mimì from La Bohème and Rusalka with the Grand Rapids Symphony, and Marfa’s aria from Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride with One World Symphony.  Alexandra has been the recipient of many awards and competition scholarships for singing from The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions to the Bel Canto Vocal Scholarship fund.

She was a recipient of the McKnight Foundation Artist Development Teacher Grant in 2020 and recently completed a video recording project of Three Greek Songs, original compositions and piano accompaniment provided by her husband Dr. Jonathan Tauscheck. Alexandra has been a Vocal Instructor at MacPhail Center for Music since 2017, performing locally in the Midwest and Minneapolis area.  In addition to teaching and performing music, she enjoys competitive tennis, gardening, and keeping active with her young sons.

Could you share the inspiration behind your performance and the overall concept of the video?

The inception of my Three Greek Songs Project was born over 25 years ago when I was studying as a Masters Voice Student in Chiari, Italy, at the International Institute of Vocal Arts outside of Milan. My instructor was Maria Zouves, a Greek soprano who was married to Sherrill Milnes, both of whom coached me during that summer program. I was encouraged to think about singing songs from part of my Greek heritage as part of an artist career development class- a thought that I would carry with me for a couple of decades.

I grew up very close to my Greek grandmother Phryne Nicolopoulos Sapan, and I remember her teaching me simple Greek words and phrases as a young girl like “Agapi mou” (my love) and “efharisto” (thank you). I was always inquiring about what the Greek words and alphabet symbols meant. We would make Spanakopita together with my great grandmother when she would visit and, my favorite Greek Cookies for Christmas and Easter called Kourambiethes and Koulourakia. There was always a lot of baking and cooking going on in her house!

My grandmother Phryne was an accomplished artist as a painter, and in other mediums such as woodworking, architectural drawings, charcoal drawings, mosaics, needlepoint, and sewing. During WWII, her job was to draw detailed ink drawings of how to assemble airplane machinery for the factories. On special occasions we would dance to Greek music from the old records she would play, like the famous “Syrtaki” Greek Dance in her art studio, snapping fingers and circle dancing together. I would play my vocal lessons from cassette tape recordings for her to listen to while I was a master’s student at the Manhattan School of Music, and she would carefully critique my singing, offering her artistic ear as to where I could make improvements on my “Sempre libera” as she was an avid fan of La Traviata and opera singers like Maria Callas. Growing up, I always knew I would visit Greece one day after hearing all of her stories about the mountainous Peloponnesian village of Karytaina where her family originated.

I have always had a love for poetry and learning new languages, studying Italian, German, French, Spanish, Czech, Latin, and Russian for learning operatic arias and scores. Due to my teaching and performing schedules, as well as parenting my two vibrant and active sons Henry and Benjamin the past 16 years, it has taken me over 25 years to begin my journey to learn Greek! Through my Teaching-Artist work at The MacPhail Center for Music in Minneapolis, I received a McKnight Foundation Artist Development Teacher Grant through a competition in 2020 where I had proposed the Greek song project. There was a three-year delay for the completion and release of the final project due to the pandemic and the untimely death of my beloved father Clifford Sapan, as well as our home getting destroyed by an enormous tree falling on it during a tornadic storm in Minnesota, which displaced our family for over a year. Devasted by all of these events, I had dark, unmotivated moments when I thought the project would never get started, but thoughts about my father, who was excited about the song project, propelled me forward.

Despite these setbacks, I began the Three Greek Songs project by choosing poems that I was attracted to in “A Century of Greek Poetry” Bilingual Edition which I ordered from The Harvard Bookstore. I chose the three poems due to their metaphysical, fluid and earthy natures, which I thought would be sublime to set to music. I then asked my dear college friend Kate, who was a missionary to refugees in Athens, to send me a recording of an authentic Greek pronunciation of the poems from a native speaker so I could start learning the words and write down a phonetic transcription of the texts. In addition, I worked online with a Greek language coach from Athens and repeated the words over and over until I understood them and learned the Greek alphabet, an arduous process that took at least a year.

I initially found it challenging to learn the letters and pronunciations, almost despairing that I would be able to accomplish this endeavor. My husband Dr. Jonathan Tauscheck set the words to music for voice and piano with his magnificent flare for modal tonality and mellifluous vocal melodies. With perseverance and practice with my vocal coach and colleague Dr. Mikyoung Park, I found the Greek language smooth and singable similar to the Italian language.

What was the recording process like for Three Greek Songs? How did the collaboration with the pianist and production team come together? Can you tell us about the filming location and any interesting moments during the shoot?

With the remaining funds from the ADT Grant, I hired Magic Film Maker to create the music video on the beachy shores of Lake Minnetonka in Excelsior, a favorite place that we like to walk, kayak, fish, swim, play tennis and basketball with our family, as well as enjoy all of the fun events, ice cream shoppes, restaurants and concerts of the lake. We had thought about filming in Santorini, but the logistics of that were beyond our budget. Anthony Darst, the director of Magic Film Maker was amazing to work with and was very excited to bring my vision to life- more than I expected! It was a chilly October Day on the lake and the director even helped carry our Roland piano down to our favorite place to walk at “Prayer Point” for filming.

Under his direction we captured the extra footage for the music video and miraculously recorded the audio on the same day in a local church! The music was blowing off the piano by the lake, coiling up gracefully, and the director wasted no time in capturing all of the shots. I had envisioned throwing the music into the water dramatically as I’ve seen in a movie or two, but this was spontaneously perfect. The lake water was icy and my feet were quite numb after all of the filming barefoot and walking on the coarse, pebbly beach.

My husband Jonathan, a Minnesota native, always quotes a line from Prince’s movie Purple Rain “you have to purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka”. This was another inspiration for the location of the music video and we always say this to each other when we jump in the lake on hot summer days. The sunset was divine that clear, breezy autumn day, just as I imagined the colors of Santorini would be, and Anthony worked his “magic” to create the official video.

Would you like to share your experience participating in our competition and thank anyone (such as mentors, supporters, or other team members)?

I am extremely honored to receive the Beeffie Creative Musical Artists Award for the Three Greek Songs music video from the Vivaldi International Music Competition and I am grateful to all of the people mentioned in this article who helped make this dream a reality including support and encouragement from my family.

Santorini VII (Poem by Nicolas Calas)

Gone are the long summer nights, the dappled shadows of fall now blaze on other beauties and joys, dulled from the flood of memory’s downpours, now stifle recollection with their waters.

They’ve passed, the flames, the desires that reared them, even the waves that fondled such joys have dried up; conches and pebbles have stopped their wordy game on the strand of expectation.

The callous shoreline watches the wind hauling the clouds toward the heaven that I loved for the sweet song of its collapse.

The long nights of summer have passed and the deep-toned shades of autumn cause the sun to blink, dazzling my foreign life, warming it with their mute, impoverished rays; craters without breath, feeble craters.

(Translated from Greek by Avi Sharon)

The River’s Portal (Poem by Thanassis Hatzopoulos)

The current that rushes to reach the sea

Deepens its course

Bares roots and breaks branches

Polishes its message-bearing rocks

Besets its banks with rage

And cleans its bed, the river’s portal

For though there it hears the earth

And robs the source, the earth-shaking

Plashing of its briny end, the sand

That blossoms a calmed desert

Accumulating its innards grain by grain within and

The gold that binds it with the light (Translated from Greek by David Connolly

Revelations of Gentle Moments (Poem by Constance Tagopoulos)

I want to remember you

listening to my poem,

silent and pensive,

a bit surprised,

a bit pensive.

I want to remember you

bringing in the candle,

happily relaxed and free of care

as your transparent hands

divided light from chaos.

I want to remember you

with that hint of love

dancing playfully just a moment

on the slackened circumflex

of your laughter.

Say nothing!

Do not justify or explain

the revelations of gentle moments.

Allow me to remember you

as a river overflowing its banks,

a poet wrestling with language

who with the very word itself

redeems his bondage to a word.

(Translated from Greek by Peter Bien)

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