Difference between revisions of "Cybele Adrianou"

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[[Category:Prime Minister Spouses]]

Revision as of 22:44, March 19, 2006

Cybele Adrianou or Kyveli Adrianou or plain Kyveli (1888 - 1978) was a Greek stage actress of the first half of the 20th Century, the great competitor of Marika Kotopouli.

Kyveli's place of birth is uncertain. Her mother was from Smyrna (Izmir), Asia Minor but at age 2 she was adopted out of an Athens orphanage by Anastasios and Maria Adrianou, a working class couple. She attended Hill School for Girls and did some reciting that earned her an award in 1901. At that point she was discovered by Konstantinos Christomanos who took her under his wing. Christomanos gave Kyveli her start in acting and became her teacher, mentor and second father.

Form 1901 until 1906, Kyveli acted in ancient Greek tragedies playing in "Alcestis" by Euripides and "Antigone" by Sophocles. She went on to play Tolstoy, Ibsen and others.

By the 1920s, Kyveli took to acting in plays written mostly by Greek authors: Pantelis Horn, Grigorios Xenopoulos, Spiros Melas. She becomes the chief competitor of Marika Kotopouli the other great Greek stage actress of that era. Their antagonism is not limited to the acting arena: Kyveli is a Venizelist, Kotopouli a conservative. However, the two legendary actresses are forced to join forces to compete with the National Theatre: They play G.B. Shaw, O' Neill and Schiller.

By 1934, Kyveli has stopped acting. World War II comes and she accompanies her then husband, Georgios Papandreou into exile in Egypt.

After the war, Kyveli staged a theatre comeback in 1950 and continues playing sporadically in the National Theatre and in the Public Theatre of Northern Greece until 1965. She died on May 26, 1978.

Kyveli had been married three times:

  • First to Mitsos Myrat (1903 - 1906) with whom she had two children, Alexandros and actress Miranda.
  • To Kostas Theodoridis with whom she had a daughter, Aliki.
  • To Georgios Papandreou the politician and future Prime Minister of Greece. They had a son, Giorgos, half-brother to Andreas Papandreou. The couple lived apart shortly after the Second World War but never divorced. When Papandreou died in November of 1968, it was Kyveli who paid all the funeral expenses.