Spyridon Xyndas or Spiridione Xinda (Σπυρίδων Ξύνδας) (1812-1896) was a Greek

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 composer and guitarist

Guitarist

A guitarist is a musician who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar while singing.- Versatility :The guitarist controls an extremely...

, whose last name has also been transliterated as "Xinta", "Xinda", "Xindas" and "Xyntas".

Biography

Xyndas was born in Corfu

Corfu

Corfu is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. It is the second largest of the Ionian Islands, and, including its small satellite islands, forms the edge of the northwestern frontier of Greece. The island is part of the Corfu regional unit, and is administered as a single municipality. The...

 in 1812. In 1823, he was a student of Nikolaos Mantzaros

Nikolaos Mantzaros

Nikolaos Halikiopoulos Mantzaros was a Greek composer born in Corfu and the major representative of the so called Ionian School of music...

 in music theory. After the completion of his studies in Corfu, he continued them in Naples and Milan. In 1840, he and Antonios Liveralis (Antonio Liberali, one more student of Mantzaros)were the only professional musicians to participate in the founding of the Philharmonic Society of Corfu, an institute in which Xyndas was to teach for several years.

In the 1840s, Xyndas began to compose concert arias and songs in demotic Greek, a contribution that eventually resulted to the creation of the opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 called the O ypopsifios (The Parliamentary Candidate) in 1867. This was the first full-scale opera based on a libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 in Greek and the only one of Xyndas' operas that exist today. The libretto was written by Ioannis Rinopulos (with contributions by Nikolaos Makris and Xyndas himself) and it was performed at the Nobile Teatro di San Giacomo di Corfù

Nobile Teatro di San Giacomo di Corfù

Nobile Teatro di San Giacomo di Corfù, translated as The Noble Theatre of Saint James of Corfu, or simply Teatro di San Giacomo, was a theatre in Corfu, Greece which became the centre of Greek opera between 1733 and 1893...

. Its seemingly comic plot is a severe criticism regarding the living conditions of the Ionian Islands' rural society, against the morality of the indegenous politicians, both during the period under British occupation (1815-1864) and after it.

Xyndas also composed other operatic works, the most notable of which was Anna Winter (based on the Dumas' The Three Musketeers), which is the earliest use of a Dumas' work in the modern Greek theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

.

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The 1888 success of his 'Candidate' in Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

, which became the occasion for the creation of the first melodramatic troupe composed of Greeks, led Xyndas and his family to the capital of Greece, where he died in 1896.Google translation of Sansimera It is believed that many of his works were destroyed during the 1943 Luftwaffe

Luftwaffe

Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....

 bombing of the Municipal Theatre of Corfu

Municipal Theatre of Corfu

The Municipal Theatre of Corfu was τhe main theatre and opera house in Corfu, Greece, from 1902 to 1943. The theatre was the successor of the Nobile Teatro di San Giacomo di Corfù, which became the Corfu city hall. It was destroyed during a Luftwaffe aerial bombardment in 1943...

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Operas

• Anna Winter (1855) aka I tris somatofylakes
• Il Conte Giuliano (1857)
• O ypopsifios vouleftis [The parliamentary candidate](1867)
• O neogambros (1877)
• I due pretendenti (1878)
• Galatea (1895, incomplete)
• I tris somatofylakes (?)