A music collector shares his joy

The Athens Conservatory is holding a special event on Monday in honor of music collector Stathis Arfanis, who donated more than 30,000 records – mostly classical and opera and many rare – to the state music school. “I could keep them locked up in my house, caressing them like many mad collectors do. Yes, I’m a mad collector too, but I like to share; I enjoy them when others enjoy them,” he tells Kathimerini. Arfanis is also passionate about early Greek melodrama. “We have forgotten this wonderful chapter of our recent cultural history,” he says. “If it were not for institutions like the Athens Conservatory, our entire musical history would end up in the trash,” he says, mentioning the discovery at an Athens landfill of the sheet music for Pavlos Carrer’s “Kyra Frosini” from 1868.