Mauthausen Trilogy

"Mauthausen Trilogy"
"Mauthausen Trilogy" cover
Ballad
Published	2000 ("Mauthausen Trilogy" version: Greek, Hebrew, English, with a speech of Simon Wiesenthal)
Released	1966 ("Mauthausen Cantata" Original version)
Recorded	1995
Composer(s)	Mikis Theodorakis
Lyricist(s)	Iakovos Kambanellis
Language	Greek, Hebrew, German, English
Producer(s)	Asteris Koutoulas & Alexandros Karozas (Mauthausen Trilogy)

The "Mauthausen Trilogy" also known as "The Ballad of Mauthausen", and the "Mauthausen Cantata", is a cycle of four arias with lyrics based on poems written by Greek poet Iakovos Kambanellis, a Mauthausen concentration camp survivor, and music written by Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis. It has been described as the "most beautiful musical work ever written about the Holocaust", and as "an exquisite, haunting and passionate melody that moves Kambanellis' affecting words to an even higher level". In May 1988, the world premiere of the "Trilogy" at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria was attended by then Austrian chancellor Franz Vranitzky and tens of thousands of Europeans. The ballad was conducted by Theodorakis and sung by Maria Farandouri in Greek, Elinor Moav in Hebrew and Gisela May in German. In May 1995, Theodorakis conducted a repeat concert of the ballad at the camp to mark the 50th anniversary of its liberation from the Nazis. It is one of the best known compositions inspired by events at the Mauthausen concentration camp, it is popular in Israel, and has been used to promote peace and cooperation worldwide. In 1991, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Israel conducted by Zubin Mehta performed the work as part of the Athens Festival. The ballad reflects Kambanellis's own experience at Mauthausen, including his love for a Lithuanian-Jewish woman, as it recounts the love affair between a young Greek prisoner and his Jewish love amidst the atrocities they witnessed at the camp. Approximately a year after the release of his ballad, during the premiere of the Mauthausen song cycle in London in 1967, Mikis Theodorakis was imprisoned in Greece by the recently installed Greek military junta and his music was banned in the country.

In World War II, Iakovos Kambanellis, a Greek author and poet, was imprisoned by the Nazis at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria where he witnessed the Nazi atrocities. Over 100,000 victims died at the camp. Kambanellis survived the incarceration at the Nazi concentration camp and, after the liberation by the allies, started writing a book based on the events and atrocities he witnessed there.