The paper examines when and how the guitar took on a leading role in the performance of incidental music in Greece. It starts from the earliest evidence of a guitar on a theatrical stage: on 19 March 1888 Spyridon Xyndas played a piece for solo guitar during the interval of his opera O Ypopsifios (The Candidate), which, however, was not incidental music, since it was not a functional part of the production. The first time in Greece that the incidental music of a production was performed exclusively by a professional guitarist was Lorca’s Doña Rosita at the National Theatre, with music by Manos Hadjidakis and Gerassimos Miliaressis, who remained offstage. For The Hostage at the Kykliko Theatre (1962), where Dimitri Fampas played on stage, the paper also links the single guitarist to the economy of the staging: the small stage of the theatre in the round required a small ensemble. As a musical example, “Anoixe to parathyro” (Open the window) from the music of the production was played, in Fampas’s arrangement.
Presentation. The paper was presented at the conference “Greek music for the opera and other forms of the performing arts in the 20th century”, at the Athens Concert Hall, in March 2009. The text was published in the conference proceedings.