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Programme Note

In my teens Melina Mercouri was my ideal of feminine beauty. Much later on, when I knew her as Minister of Culture, I came to understand something of her inner beauty and to empathise with her burning aspirations for Greece. Then, all of a sudden, while on holiday in Cyprus, I learned of her death. My immediate reaction was to ring her brother Spiros whom I had met the year previously. Alas, I did not have his number, so instead I wrote 'Melina'.