The President of the Republic, Konstantinos Tasoulas, inaugurated, earlier today, the Anna Synodinou Museum at the ceremony, held at the Alexandria Conference Center of Loutraki, as a tribute to the memory and work of the great Greek tragedy and politician.

Referring to Anna Synodinou, Mr. Tasoulas emphasized, inter alia, that “we are preserved today with the creation of this museum. And if our death deprived us of “the most honest, its form”, to lightly paraphrase Cavafy’s lyrics, the values ​​it was prevalent – truth, discipline, responsibility – remain stable and still inspire us. “

At the same time, the President pointed out the great legacy he left, both in theater and politics and argued that “the Anna Synodinou Museum we are inaugurating today is a place of living dialogue with our great tragedy”.

Here is the greeting of Mr. Tasoula:

“With emotion and sense of honor I am here today, in the birthplace of our great tragedy, Anna Synodinos, for the inauguration of a space dedicated to memory and in its spiritual legacy. In memory of the exquisite actor, the politician who brightened the parliamentary seats continuously elected with the New Democracy party from 1974 to 1989, the personality that radiated integrity, consistency and morality. And the spiritual legacy of a visionary of the theater, who deeply believed in the power of stage art to teach and cultivate citizens and came with all its strengths and devoted himself to this mission.

It started from here, from Loutraki, an eighth child of a family who grew up, as she used to say, with love, principles and Christian education. She studied at the Drama School of the National Theater, taught ballet and music, stood out with her interpretation of ancient drama, in all the great female roles. As Antigone, Electra, Alkistis, Andromachi, Lysistrati, Helen, Clytemnestra, Hecavi. She created her own troupe, the Greek scene, and honored the Greek Word with her “admirer in her expressive and shine voice”, as Gerasimos Stavrou wrote in June 1962 for her interpretation of Eleni’s ‘Eleni’ by Euripides. The phrase that accompanied her to her long career was that of Marika Kotopouli, with whom she welcomed her in 1950, as a member of the dance in “Hoophares”: “You, my girl, leave everything else and study the ancient texts.” That’s what he did. He dug and leaned deep into the great texts and came to the patient to rebuild a distant and at the same time so close world that he wanted man, man in his entirety, political, that is, free, unmistakable to the gods but obedient to the divine nature, “they”.

Theater and politics were the two poles of Anna Synodinos’ life. From the ancient drama – core of public reflection and collective consciousness – and the modern theater – mirror, where society sees its face – moved naturally and with the same moral robustness in dealing with the community as a member and deputy minister of social services. He suggested legislative proposals for the protection of elders, motherhood, children and people with disabilities, succeeded in introducing artistic education courses in Secondary Education, proposed the establishment of the State School of Orchestral Art. “For my own temperament,” she said in an interview in 1977, “no instinct and no glow of inspiration can truly be exploited if there has been no preceding work, spiritual, mental and physical. Therefore, politics, a social necessity, with its trenches and rationality, presupposes knowledge and engagement with many aspects of public and private life. Only in this way will politics organize a better life for human society with talent. “

Politics, then, was her initiative to create in 1965, in the old Lycabettus quarry, an outdoor theater “on the standards of the ancients, with too many positions for the broad audience and with a cheap ticket”, as she said, in other words of artistic and artistic creation. A high political morality event to abandon the scene, two years later, with the imposition of dictatorship in 1967. Politician and the way the theater was hired, as a “struggle”, as a race, with the ancient meaning of the word, that is, as a place of gathering, to attend a creative act.

So let’s be the Anna Synodinou Museum that we are inaugurating today, a place of living dialogue with our great tragedy. “Always shake for oblivion, which means death, and I chose the memorandum that abolishes it,” she wrote in her book “Aenos in the Axis”. “I lived next to great souls. In the deep crypt of memory and consciousness, I kept their majesty. ” We are preserved today with the creation of this museum. And if our death deprived us of “the most honest, its form”, to lightly paraphrase Cavafy’s lyrics, the values ​​it was prevalent – truth, discipline, responsibility – remain stable and still inspire us. “