Interview with Matanya Ophee (1932-2017) A Life for Guitar Music

Abstract

Who was Matanya Ophee? A combat pilot who survived being shot down during the Sinai campaign in 1956 and later a veteran captain of the US Airways fleet? A classical guitar player and a passionate all-over-the-world archive digger in search of forgotten treasures of post-Napoleonic French, Russian, Italian, and Spanish guitar repertoires? An inspiration to contemporary composers all over the world to create new works for guitar? A champion publisher of guitar music—Editions Orphée? A rebellious son of a rebellious homme de letters—Aaron Pollack (1892–1960), the author of studies on the etymology of the Hebrew language and tabooed Bible interpretations, as well as opera singer and cantor, one of the regulars of the famous bohemian gatherings at Café Kassit in Tel Aviv? A historian– musicologist, the author of numerous articles in many languages and the fundamental book on the history of guitar music?2 Passionate aficionado going so far as to learn Russian in order to read Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita in the original language? Untiring internet forums’ polemist?  Why were you Ophee and not Pollack? The word means “character” in Hebrew, and this seems an auto-description. Did anyone have any doubt?