Xenia (Greek)

Xenia (Greek: ξενία, xenía, trans. "guest-friendship") is the ancient Greek concept of hospitality, the generosity and courtesy shown to those who are far from home and/or associates of the person bestowing guest-friendship. The rituals of hospitality created and expressed a reciprocal relationship between guest and host expressed in both material benefits (such as the giving of gifts to each party) as well as non-material ones (such as protection, shelter, favors, or certain normative rights).

The Greek god Zeus is sometimes called Zeus Xenios in his role as a protector of travelers. He thus embodied the religious obligation to be hospitable to travelers. Theoxeny or theoxenia is a theme in Greek mythology in which human beings demonstrate their virtue or piety by extending hospitality to a humble stranger (xenos), who turns out to be a disguised deity (theos) with the capacity to bestow rewards. These stories caution mortals that any guest should be treated as if potentially a disguised divinity and help establish the idea of xenia as a fundamental Greek custom. The term theoxenia also covered entertaining among the gods themselves, a popular subject in classical art, which was revived at the Renaissance in works depicting a Feast of the Gods.

Greek (play)

Greek is a play by Steven Berkoff.

It was first performed at the Half Moon Theatre in London on 11 February 1980, in a production directed by the author. The cast was:

It is a retelling of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. Berkoff wrote:

The play was used as the basis for a well-received opera of the same name composed by Mark-Anthony Turnage and first performed in 1988.

References

Greeks

The Greeks or Hellenes (Greek: Έλληνες [ˈelines]) are an ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus, Albania, Turkey, Southern Italy, and other regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world.

Greek colonies and communities have been historically established on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea, but the Greek people have always been centered around the Aegean and Ionian seas, where the Greek language has been spoken since the Bronze Age. Until the early 20th century, Greeks were distributed between the Greek peninsula, the western coast of Asia Minor, the Black Sea coast, Cappadocia in central Anatolia, Egypt, the Balkans, Cyprus, and Constantinople. Many of these regions coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and the Eastern Mediterranean areas of ancient Greek colonization. The cultural centers of the Greeks have included Athens, Thessalonica, Alexandria, Smyrna, and Constantinople at various periods.

Greek (opera)

Greek is an opera in two acts composed by Mark-Anthony Turnage to a libretto adapted by Turnage and Jonathan Moore from Steven Berkoff's 1980 verse play Greek. The play and the opera are a re-telling of Sophocles's Greek tragedy Oedipus the King with the setting changed to the East End of London in the 1980s. The opera was first performed on 17 June 1988 in the Carl-Orff-Saal, Munich, in a co-production by the Munich Biennale, the Edinburgh International Festival and the BBC.

Background and performance history

Turnage composed Greek between 1986 and 1988 as a commission from the City of Munich for one of five new operas to premiere at the first Münchener Biennale. The commission was suggested by the Biennale's founder, German composer Hans Werner Henze, who had taught Turnage at the Tanglewood Music Center and admired his work. Turnage adapted Berkoff's play for the libretto with the help of Jonathan Moore who would be the stage director of the premiere production. The adaptation involved shortening the play, re-ordering some of its text, and the addition of a police riot scene not in Berkoff's original.

Xenia

Xenia may mean:

Generosity or hospitality

Places

People

Xenia (hotel)

Xenia (Ξενία) was a nationwide hotel construction program initiated by the Hellenic Tourism Organisation (Ελληνικός Οργανισμός Τουρισμού, E.O.T.) to improve the country's tourism infrastructure in the 1960s and 1970s. It constitutes one of the largest infrastructure projects in modern Greek history.

History

Until the 1950s, Greece featured only a few major hotels, mostly situated in the country's great cities, and a few smaller ones in islands like Corfu or Rhodes. In 1950, EOT began a program to construct and operate hotels across the country, especially in the less-travelled areas. Locations were specially selected and the architecture combined local knowledge with standardized elements. The buildings were embedded in the landscape, but at the same time followed a modernist style.

The first manager of the project was the architect Charalambos Sfaellos (from 1950 to 1958) and from 1957 the buildings were designed by a team under Aris Konstantinidis. Many private hotel projects in Greece were inspired by the Xenia hotels and the program had reached its aims in the early 1970s. In 1974 the construction program was complete. The Xenia program itself was officially terminated in 1983, and the hotels were given over to private operators or eventually sold off.

Xenia (singer)

Xenia Edith Martinez (born December 17, 1994), known mononymously as Xenia, is an American singer who came in second place on Blake Shelton's team on the first season of The Voice.

Life and career

Early life

Born in Chula Vista, California and raised in nearby Temecula, Xenia is the middle child in a family of five. She learned how to play the guitar when she was 6. The instruments she plays are the guitar, harmonica and piano (she learned by ear). She attended Great Oak High School, but was later home-schooled. Prior to her entering The Voice, none of her peers, including her best friend, knew that Xenia could sing.

2011: The Voice

Xenia participated in season 1 of The Voice, making it to the Final 8 and placing 2nd on Team Blake. She auditioned with the song, "Breakeven", and was vied for by two judges, Cee Lo Green and Blake Shelton, but eventually chose Blake as her coach. She later emerged victorious over Sara Oromchi in the battle round phase, singing a duet of "I'll Stand By You". Two of the studio versions of her live performances, "Price Tag" and "The Man Who Can't Be Moved", charted on the Billboard Hot 100. "Price Tag" entered the Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart at 116 before climbing to 99 on the Hot 100 charts the subsequent week. She still keeps in touch with her coach, Blake Shelton, as well as past contestants such as Dia Frampton, Nakia and Vicci Martinez.