Giovanna

Ioanna Fassou Kalpaxi (Yovanna),  was born in Greece. She is the daughter of the famous greek painter Kostas Fassos. As a little girl she sang in a children's choir and, at the age of eight, she began taking piano and dancing lessons. When she was fourteen -cautiously at first due to her young age- she started taking opera singing lessons at the Music Academy of Athens. At the same time, with the radio orchestra for light music and under the assumed name of Yovanna, she was being broadcast by the Greek radio, thereby putting in jeopardy the scholarship that the Music Academy of Athens had awarded her, as this sort of activity was strictly forbidden.