Serves 4-6
 

This cool, tangy yogurt takes just minutes to make, and yet it's so delicious on so many foods, it makes its way to my table on a regu­lar basis. Add a little diced red onion and try this as a wholesome substitute for mayonnaise in tuna or chicken salads. My family in Greece treats this as a condiment, and prepares it just about daily to serve with roasted chicken, brisket, pita bread, meatballs, and fried fish. It's considered essential with roasted lamb; even the gyros vendors on the streets in Athens won't let you walk away without a dollop of tzatziki on top of the meat.

There are a dozen different ways to cut cucumber for tzatziki­sliced, chunky, minced, diced-but my favorite method is the one I learned while on Skopelos. Using an old-fashioned metal grater, I grate my peeled cucumber right up to the seeds while holding it over the yogurt to catch all the juices and the flavor.

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 cups plain yogurt (regular or low-fat)
1 medium cucumber, peeled and halved lengthwise

In a bowl, combine the lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, salt, and yogurt. Grate the cucumber halves into the yogurt mixture up to the seeds; discard the seeds. Mix well. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Serve chilled.
SERVES 4 TO 6

"Prepare to be swept away!," one critic wrote about Sometimes I Dream, the Greek tenor Mario Frangoulis's international breakthrough album for Sony Classical which another writer described as "bathed in the passionate atmosphere of the Mediterranean." Columnist Liz Smith hailed the album as "a dream trip," adding, "Move over, Andrea Bocelli!" And now Frangoulis is back with Follow Your Heart, a striking new collection of songs that reflect his personality and burnish the sound of his remarkable voice, to be released in early 2005.

The new recording will take Frangoulis in new directions, featuring gorgeous original ballads, dazzling arrangements of favorite classical melodies and a soaring duet with Latino superstar Alejandro Fernandez. The handsome young tenor tapped a worldwide audience with the 2002 release of Sony Classical/Odyssey's Sometimes I Dream, a Mediterranean-flavored album that showcased his versatile style, rooted in his operatic training but inspired by the energy and sound of contemporary pop.

The new album, released in Europe just before the tenor performed at the Summer Olympic Games in Athens, was the highlight of an already been a remarkable year for Frangoulis. With such superstars as Alanis Morissette, Natalie Cole, Robbie Williams, Diana Krall, Elvis Costello and Sheryl Crow, he appears in the MGM film biography of Cole Porter - De Lovely, starring Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd and sings Porter's "So in Love" with Sony Music artist Lara Fabian, featured on the Grammy-nominated original soundtrack recording.

Mario Frangoulis's remarkable story belies the fact that he is a young tenor from Greece. Born in Africa - in colonial Rhodesia, as it was becoming the nation of Zimbabwe - he survived a childhood marked by hardships both at home and in the world outside. At the age of four, his mother found a home for him with her sister in Greece, at a time when the political situation in Africa was explosive and dangerous. Raised by his aunt in Greece and separated from his beloved older brother, Mario was surrounded with a large extended family. Today, he speaks fondly of both sets of parents and the feeling for music they instilled in him. He studied the violin and even composed a bit when he was a boy. At the age of 17, he was sent to London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama to study acting. The stage was an obvious choice because, among other things, Mario was considered handsome enough to be a matinee idol. In fact, he has already wowed audiences on London's West End as the dashing young hero in both Les Miserables and The Phantom of the Opera.

But in his days as a drama student at Guildhall, Mario discovered the operatic side of his tenor voice, winning the Maria Callas Prize, which he auditioned for simply because he knew some arias and a friend encouraged him. Juggling this newfound ambition with his burgeoning stage career, he found himself on a path that took him to New York's Juilliard School of Music as a scholarship student. His pursuits won him the support and counsel of such operatic legends as Alfredo Kraus and Marilyn Horne. He was the only private student the late Kraus ever
accepted.

"I always sang, from an early age, with a record player - with Greek singers, of course, but also recordings of movie musicals, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand," Mario remembers. "I knew I had a good voice but I didn't know I had an operatic voice. In the beginning, I was against anyone saying I had that kind of operatic sound. I had always felt I didn’t belong in that category. I wanted to communicate the music, and I didn’t think opera singers sounded young enough, modern enough. Then I saw a performance of Carmen in Athens with Jose Carreras and Agnes Baltsa, and I realized I could be all of those things.”

At the instigation of Horne, Mario went to Rome for Kraus and Nicola Rescigno, who was Maria Callas’s favorite conductor. Both were impressed. He became Kraus’s student, flying all over the world to take lessons as the great tenor continued to perform. The experience gave Frangoulis a solid vocal technique and good high notes, both hallmarks of Kraus’s style.

Yet the career Mario has built is anything but a conventional operatic career. He sang the role of Tony in West Side Story in its first performances at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala. He has appeared in films and on television, in concerts and even in epic presentations of Greek tragedies. And he is not quite 35 years old. He lives in Athens, surrounded by family – “millions of cousins,” he says, with a laugh – and he loves sea sports, from wind surfing to scuba diving.

In his native Greece, Mario has been acclaimed in everything from the role of high-school hero Danny Zuko in Grease to a production of Aristophanes’ The Birds featuring the songs of Greek composer Manos Hadjidakis (the Oscar-winning composer of “Never On Sunday”) – in the ancient amphitheater at Epidaurus. As an actor, Mario has played leading roles in King Lear, The Bacchae and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and he created the title role in Kit Hesketh-Harvey and James Mackonnell’s Yusupov.

The tenor began recording for Sony Classical in Greece in 1998, and his recordings always topped the charts at home. The release of Sometimes I Dream tapped an international audience, with material that drew freely on opera, rock, film and pop music. The new recording is the next chapter in his remarkable musical adventures.

Mario Frangoulis resides in Athens, Greece.

 

  Featured Destination: Galazidi

West of Delphi, the road winds down 13km past Chrisso (campsite and a nice xenona) to a crossroads. The road north goes to the Brallos Pass and Lamia (see p.381) by way of modern Amphissa, presiding over a vast sea of olives just as it did in ancient times. Known as Salona in the Middle Ages, it boasts an attractive Frankish castle (c.1205) on Classical foundations; although seldom visited now, it got far too much attention in the past, changing hands from French to Catalans (1311) to Turks in 1394. The Brallos road eventually passes a signposted turn-off to Heracles' Funeral Pyre on Mount Oite, where the big guy laid himself to escape the pain of the centaur Nessus' flesh-eating shirt and Zeus blasted his mortal parts away with a thunderbolt and made him god. But don't expect to see anything much except mountain scenery.

The road south from the crossroads goes through olive groves to workaday Itea, ancient Delphi's port, where most pilgrims landed. It has a pretty seaside promenade, a wide shingle beach, and a view of the entire bay with its small islands. Other than that, you could give Itea a miss, and hightail it past the dark red mounds of bauxite and the fish farms in the deep bay west of town, and on to much nicer Galaxidi.

Galaxidi's densely stacked houses and tiny gardens cover two lovely, low headlands punctured by little fjords. A road circles around the edges, but it is sometimes one­way, forcing you into charming twisty back lanes.One house, built right on top of an ancient city wall, reminds us that maritime Galaxidi has been a going concern for a long time. In the 14th century bc it was called Oianthe and had an acropolis on the headland where the church is today. Shipbuilding was its mainstay, with a little piracy thrown in; all kinds of ancient gold and silver coins have been found in the harbour. After a bad patch of barbarian incursions and earthquakes in the 6th century, it was favoured by the Byzantines and had a monastery built by Michael Comnenus himself. It continued to thrive except for a glitch in 1660 when pirates destroyed the town. Even the Turks granted it privileges, but it reached its zenith after independence. By 1890 it had a fleet of 550 ships, seaside mansions and forest (still there, on the south side of the fishing port) especially planted for its boat builders. The Archaeological­Nautical Museum (t 226 504 7558; open Tues-Sun 9-2:30) tells the tale.

Galaxidi ran out of steam when it ran into steam. No one needed its lyrical sailing boats any more, and the locals contented themselves with captaining the ships of others, something they still do. Meanwhile the town looks better than ever: in the last 30 years, foreigners and Greeks have renovated its imposing neoclassical houses, and the tasteful and laid-back result is part gay resort, part family resort, and a popular destination foryachties.The town `beach' and others around the southern headland are less than stellar, but the swimming is good and its narrow fishing port is just lovely, for both people and ducks.

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