‘Megaron Plus’ begins promising second season
Helbi salutes the great success of the «Megaron Plus» program and congratulates the organizers, the Friends of Music Association, for their achievement. All the arts pages in the press and relevant television programs were agog with the details of the program that last year attracted 36,335 people to the Triandi Hall during its first experimental season. This year, the second, promises to be particularly impressive, with the participation of architects, writers (such as Isabel Allende, Pavel Kohut and Derek Walcott, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992), the linguist Claude Hagege and Professor Georgios Babiniotis, rector of Athens University. Economist Jeremy Rifkin, Austrian mathematician Rudolf Tassne and from Greece K. Dafermos, G. Moschovakis, A. Fokas and G. Dasios, the editor of Le Monde Jean-Marie Colombani, the composer Michael Nyman, Professor Jean-Marie Lehn (who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1987), the geophysicist and former education minister Claude Allegre, Italian politician and professor Mario Mondi, Maathai Wangari (the Nobel Peace Prize recipient of 2003), and, best of all, Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomaios. Here are three more names: French philosopher Michel Onfray, Andre Putman and Hermes’s Rena Dumas, who is of Greek origin. Another interesting name on the guest list is the French astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy, whose talk on his experiences in space will be accompanied by an exhibition titled «Between Heaven and Earth.» For cinephiles, there will be a tribute to Luchino Visconti. As announced by the president of the Association (and the soul of the program), Christos Lambrakis, at a press conference, this year the emphasis is on Italy. The first two events in the program’s second cycle are on Tuesday, Jan. 17, at 7 p.m. with a discussion of the subject «Do our languages have a future?» with Claude Hagege and Georgios Babiniotis. Then on Thursday, Jan. 19, the American economist and writer Jeremy Rifkin will be giving a lecture on the subject «The world economy in the hydrogen age: the role of the European Union, the US and Asia.» Rifkin’s latest book «The European Dream,» published in 2004, has been translated into 15 languages. The lecture is within the framework of cooperation between Megaron Plus and Livanis Publications.
