Greek Musician Brings Ancient Lyre to Nolan’s Odyssey Soundtrack

The news in Greek

1. μουσικολόγος  (f.)
   Ειδικός που μελετά την ιστορία και τη θεωρία της μουσικής. ↩︎
2. λύρα  (f.)
   Παλαιό μουσικό όργανο με χορδές που χρησιμοποιούνταν στην αρχαία Ελλάδα. ↩︎
3. ηχογραφώ
   Καταγράφω ήχους ή μουσική σε ψηφιακή ή αναλογική μορφή. ↩︎
4. συνθέτης  (m.)
   Άτομο που δημιουργεί μουσικές συνθέσεις. ↩︎
5. όργανο  (n.)
   Αντικείμενο που χρησιμοποιείται για την παραγωγή μουσικών ήχων. ↩︎
6. εμπειρία  (f.)
   Γνώση ή δεξιότητα που αποκτάται μέσα από την πράξη ή τη συμμετοχή σε γεγονότα. ↩︎

Translation

Text comprehension

Question 1: Where is Roza Frangorapti from?

Question 2: Where did Roza record the music for the film?

Vocabulary

Greek	English
μουσικολόγος  (f.)	musicologist
λύρα  (f.)	lyre
ηχογραφώ	to record
συνθέτης  (m.)	composer
όργανο  (n.)	instrument
εμπειρία  (f.)	experience

Read the full story

Roza Fragkoraptis, a musicologist from Thessaloniki, has played a quiet but significant role in one of the year’s biggest cinema releases — Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey — by performing on a reconstructed ancient Greek seven-string chelys lyre for the film’s soundtrack.

Fragkoraptis told the radio station Praktoreio 104.9 FM that she was initially unaware of the project’s identity. “I did not know what it was about at first. The project had a code name and the initial enquiry simply concerned my availability for some recordings during the winter,” she said. It was only upon arriving at Real World Studios, near Bath in the United Kingdom, that she learned she was working on The Odyssey. “It was a huge and extremely pleasant surprise,” she added.

The recordings took place last February at Real World Studios, the facility founded by Peter Gabriel at the old Box Mill building in Wiltshire, England. There, Fragkoraptis collaborated with Oscar-winning composer Ludwig Göransson to contribute the lyre’s sound to the film’s original score. She described the working atmosphere as one of “absolute freedom but also great clarity,” noting that Göransson and his team worked “with exemplary teamwork, without hierarchical distances, showing deep respect for the instruments and the particular sound they produce.”

The instrument she played is a reconstruction of the ancient seven-string chelys lyre, built by instrument maker Nikolaos Bras. Fragkoraptis explained that her research focuses on reconstructing how ancient Greek instruments sounded, drawing on philological texts, vase paintings and surviving musical fragments, in collaboration with archaeomusicologists, philologists and instrument makers. “There are no recordings from antiquity,” she noted.

The Odyssey soundtrack is built around ancient-style instruments, including the double aulos played by Callum Armstrong, flutes from Albanian polyphony, vocals, percussion and synthesiser elements. At the London premiere, Fragkoraptis said she was moved by how faithfully the natural sound of the instruments had been preserved. “There is no distortion, and what the audience hears in the cinema is exactly the sound the instruments produce when we play them live,” she said.

Separately, Italian stuntman and dancer Simone Moncada, born in Syracuse, Sicily, spent four months on the production in Greece, Sicily and Scotland as a member of Odysseus’s crew. He described Nolan as remarkably calm on set. “He knew exactly what he wanted,” Moncada said, adding that the experience taught him that working with Nolan requires total commitment: “You have to live it one hundred per cent.” The film has already surpassed 900 million dollars at the global box office within its first weeks of release.

Fragkoraptis summed up her own experience simply. “I am deeply grateful. It was a true blessing — for the way it happened, the moment it occurred, and the creative meeting of people and cultures around the ancient Greek musical heritage.”