In London he composed the secular cantata Ilios o Protos (Sun the First) on the poetry of Odysseas Elytis (Nobel Prize 1979) and completed the musical ceremony Idou o Nymphios, a work the composer still wishes to keep unreleased with the exception of one part, the song Zavara-Katra-Nemia, a vocal composition of Dionysian character, that was released in 1966 and became one of his best known pieces.
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In 1976 he composed the popular liturgy The Free Besieged, based on the poem by Greece’s national poet Dionysios Solomos, that he conducted in the crowded Panathenean Stadium, and which was presented in London in 1979.
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Markopoulos continued composing music for the theatre and for the cinema, collaborating with directors such as Jules Dassin, George Cosmatos, Nikos Koundouros and Spyros Evaggelatos.
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There followed Re-Naissance: Crete between Venice and Constantinople, a musical journey in four units that strikes a balance between the opera form and that of the oratorio, and the opera Erotokritos and Areti.
Yannis Spathas | Yannis Bezos | Yannis Philippakis | Yannis Kyriakides | Yannis Behrakis | Giorgos Markopoulos |