Greek composer and political activist Mikis Theodorakis dies aged 96

His death at his home in central Athens was announced on state television and followed multiple hospital admissions in recent years, mostly for heart treatment.

His prolific career that started at the age of 17 produced a hugely varied body of work that ranged from sombre symphonies to popular television and the film scores for Serpico and Zorba The Greek.

But the towering man with his hoarse voice and wavy hair is also remembered by Greeks for his stubborn opposition to post-war regimes that persecuted him and outlawed his music.

“He lived with passion, a life dedicated to music, the arts, our country and its people, dedicated to the ideas of freedom, justice, equality, social solidarity,” President Katerina Sakellaropoulou said in a statement.

“He wrote music that became intertwined with the historical and social developments in Greece in the post-war years, music that provided encouragement, consolation, protest and support in the darker periods of our recent history.”

Born Michail Theodorakis on the eastern Aegean island of Chios on July 29 1925, he was exposed to music and politics from a young age.

He began writing music and poetry in his teens, just as Greece entered the Second World War. He was arrested by the country’s Italian and German occupiers for his involvement in left-wing resistance groups.

Some of those groups bitterly opposed the government and monarchy that led immediately Greece after the war, leading to a 1946-49 civil war in which the communist-backed rebels eventually lost.

Theodorakis was jailed and sent to remote Greek islands, including the infamous “re-education” camp on the small island of Makronissos near Athens. As a result of severe beatings and torture, he suffered broken limbs, respiratory problems and other injuries that plagued his health for the rest of his life.

He suffered tuberculosis, was thrown into a psychiatric hospital, and was subjected to mock executions.

Despite the hardships, he established himself as a respected musician. He graduated from Athens Music School in 1950 and continued his studies in Paris on a scholarship in 1954.

A prolific career as a composer began in earnest, as he worked in a huge range of genres from film scores and ballet music to operas, as well as chamber music, ancient Greek tragedies and Greek folk, collaborating with leading poets including Spain’s Federico Garcia Lorca and the Greek Nobel laureate Odysseas Elytis.

A music series based on poems written by Nazi concentration camp survivor Iakovos Kambanellis, The Ballad Of Mauthausen, described the horrors of camp life and the Holocaust.

But it was the Oscar-winning film adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’ Zorba The Greek in 1964, and the title score by Theodorakis that made him a household name.

The movie starring Anthony Quinn, Alan Bates and Irene Pappas picked up three Academy Awards.

As Theodorakis’ fame grew, political turmoil in Greece continued, and his compositions were banned by a military dictatorship that governed the country between 1967 and 1974 — turning his music into a soundtrack of resistance that would be played at protest rallies for decades.

Tireless in later life, Theodorakis continued to work with emerging artists and compositions that included music for the opening ceremony of the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, and maintained an active interest in politics.

He was a member of parliament for the Greek Communist Party for most of the 1980s but later served the cabinet of the conservative government. He spoke at rallies supporting Palestinian statehood, against the war in Iraq and more recently in opposition to an agreement to end a name dispute between Greece and North Macedonia.