Nana Mouskouri wants to say goodbye to the stage at almost 90 years old

“A few more performances, and then that will be it,” the Greek singer announced Thursday, a few days before her birthday.

Nana Mouskouri advert in German magazine Der SpiegelThursday October 3, 2024, wanting to say goodbye to the stage. She doesn’t look her age, with her unmistakable look, her long bob and her big-framed glasses, but she will be 90 in a few days. She has more than 1,500 songs to her credit and nearly 400 million albums sold, more than Celine Dion and Madonna. Artists with longevity like his are not commonplace. And the adventure continues, since in around ten days, a new album of his greatest hits, re-recorded by an orchestra, will be released. When she hears these recordings, she can’t help but cry, she confides.

When you have experienced a thousand lives, poverty and hunger in childhood, the Nazi occupation, the civil war, the regime of the colonels, when you are 90 years old, you have every right to be a little melancholic, but also nostalgic for the stage on which she performed again recently, last April, for the passing of the Olympic flame in Athens. A scene that she is preparing to leave because, this time, she feels that she has done enough.

Nana Mouskouri had already said goodbye to the stage, in 2008, during a concert in Athens. She was only 75 years old, 15 years ago. She was still a young girl, she just didn’t know it. And then very quickly, she realized that she was too bored”far from [son] audience“. Since Nana Mouskouri, who some say is the most famous Greek personality after Plato, has experienced many sorrows and disappearances. Friends who leave. Illness too, pancreatic cancer, peritonitis, a serious Covid, which she overcame, to the point that her doctor nicknamed her “champion“.”I’m not going to pretend to be a young woman either. I’m not allowed to go on stage and sing badly. I’m not going to make people suffer“, she confides, before adding: “I think I’m going to do a few more performances, and then that will be it“.