The largest part of the most important private music archive in Greece, the Stathis Arfanis Archive, is donated by the collector to the Athens Conservatory. On the occasion of this donation, the Athens Conservatory is holding a tribute to the Archive and its donor, on April 3rd at 20:00, in the Aris Garoufalis hall.

Kiki Morfoniou, Ioulia Trusa, Giorgos Maniatis, Yiannis Efstathiadis and Kyriakos Loukakos will speak about Stathis Arfanis and his many years of contribution to the formation of our musical heritage at the event.

The Archive is presented by Stella Kurbanas, curator of the Archive of the Athens Conservatory.

The Archive of Stathis Arfanis

Over 30,000 vinyl and gramophone records, as well as cassettes, VHS and radio discs with unique recordings by Greek and foreign performers and composers are part of the valuable Archive of Stathis Arfanis.

​Autographs of Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, Liszt, Brahms, Berlioz, Stravinsky, as well as internationally renowned singers from Caruso to Zachariou and from De Hidalgo to Baltsa are a small part of the rich collection. Priceless original photographs, hundreds of archival documents, rare concert programs and posters from the beginning of the 20th century compose a new, unknown, picture of musical life in Greece.

​Stathis Arfanis, in addition to creating the richest collection of documents, rare publications, magazines and sheet music, took care to save a number of files of important Greek singers (such as T. Xirelli, P. Epitropaki, O. Lappa, M. Fleury, Z Vlachopoulou, E. Maglivera, A. Delenda, T. Vlaikou), as well as precious pages of Greek music from the most unlikely places.

Stathis Arfanis was born in Athens in 1946. After graduating from the Moraitis School, he studied at the School of Physics and Mathematics of the AUTH and at the National Conservatory (with L. Zora). His interest in music began at the age of 10 when an uncle gave him a collection of 12 gramophone records with Greek and foreign singers.

Since then he started collecting records, which today stands at 30,000. It contains, among other things, rare examples of the art of Greek Opera singers released in the first years of the discography, while some of them are worldwide unique.

At the same time, he gathered a rich collection of programs, clippings, books and photographs related to Greek Melodrama and Greek Music in general.

This Archive was mainly based on the recording edition of the YPPO “Greek Lyrical Theater – 100 years: 1888-1988”.

Stathis Arfanis published the prize-winning discography of Dimitris Mitropoulos in the USA “The complete discography of DM” (Irina SA Athens 1990) as well as other discographies that are under publication. His texts have been published in the daily and periodical press, while among others he is a member of the “Wilhelm Furtwängler Society” and “The MariaCallas International Club”.