Marinella, one of Greece’s most iconic voices with a career spanning decades, died on Saturday at the age of 87.
She had suffered a stroke during a live performance in September 2024, collapsing on stage at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. After four months in hospital, she was discharged to continue rehabilitation at home.
Born Kyriaki Papadopoulou in Thessaloniki, Marinella grew up in a musically gifted family and appeared on a children’s radio show at just four years old. Her professional breakthrough came in 1957 alongside Stelios Kazantzidis.
The pair, partners both on and off stage, marrying in 1964 and divorcing two years later, achieved major success in Greece and within diaspora markets, touring Europe and the United States and performing works by leading Greek composers.
She launched a solo career in 1966, collaborating with prominent songwriters and cementing her place as a defining figure in Greek music. In 1973, she married fellow singer Tolis Voskopoulos; the marriage ended in 1981.
Despite her status, Marinella rejected the label of “legend.” In an earlier interview with Kathimerini, she had said she performed out of love, seeking a direct connection with her audience – “whether a hundred people or thousands… I look them in the eye, as one face, and say ‘I love you’” – while insisting that offstage, “I am nothing.”
Reflecting on her personal life in a 2016 Kathimerini interview, she said: “I feel fulfilled. I fell in love, I was loved, I experienced love and enjoyed it. I wore that ‘suit.’ Let me do the math… I’ve been without a man for thirty years. It’s not that I haven’t been flirted with since, but everything is in the mind. Just as I once threw my cigarettes out the window, when I used to smoke five packs a day, and just as I stopped eating meat, the same happened with men. Enough.”
