Iconic singer-songwriter, Arleta, dead at age 72
Athens-born singer-songwriter Arleta died Tuesday morning at the age of 72 at an Athens hospital where she had been in the intensive care unit after suffering a severe stroke. She rose to international fame as an icon of the Greek new wave scene.
Arleta launched her career in the 1960s, singing songs written by a number of well-known Greek composers such as Manos Hadjidakis and Mikis Theodorakis, after graduating from the Athens School of Fine Arts.
One of her songs, “I Remember a Time When Once You Used to Love Me,” written by Yiannis Spanos, was covered by Australian band Dirty Three, which included it in their “Horse Stories” album in 1996.
Arleta, whose real name was Argiro Nikoletta Tsapra, also published a book in 1997 called “How to Get to Spring,” based on her songwriting, and which included her own illustrations.
Arleta remained active in her later years, despite suffering a stroke in 2008 just a few minutes before a concert in Volos, and suffering from health problems since then. The stroke had kept her in hospital for six months and left her partly paralyzed for a year.
