The programme of the new season
At the beginning of the new season of the Greek National Opera, the celebrations of the centenary of Maria Callas' birth will culminate in an opera gala, a performative exhibition and a documentary film.
La Bohème.
Opera gala
Callas at the Herodium
16 September 2023
Starts at: 21.00
Odeon of Herodes Atticus
Conductor: TBA
Soloists: TBA
With the GNO Orchestra
A flagship event of the Greek National Opera’s tribute programme marking the centennial anniversary of Maria Callas’ birth is the major opera gala titled Callas at the Herodium, to be held on 16 September 2023 at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. This event forms part of the 2023 UNESCO Maria Callas Anniversary proposed by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports.
Maria Callas’ performance career in Greece intersects with the Odeon of Herodes Atticus across two separate eras. In July 1944, one year before she left Athens for New York, Maria Kalogeropoulou would perform the role of Smaragda in the Manolis Kalomiris opera The Master Builder at the venue, conducted by the composer himself and directed by Sokratis Karantinos; days later, in August 1944, she would also play Leonora there in Beethoven’s Fidelio, conducted by Hans Hörner and directed by Oscar Wallek.
A full thirteen years later, in 1957, and having since conquered the world, Maria Meneghini-Callas would return to the Odeon of Herodes Atticus to give an historic recital at the Athens Festival, featuring arias from Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, Giuseppe Verdi’s La Forza del Destino and Il Trovatore, Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, and Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet, conducted by Antonino Votto.
On Saturday, 16 September 2023, this precise repertoire is to be presented at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus by the Greek National Opera as part of its 2023 anniversary Gala titled Callas at the Herodium, hosted 46 years to the day from the death of Maria Callas.
Internationally renowned leading lights of the opera world will pay tribute to Maria Callas, performing arias from operas by Kalomiris, Beethoven, Wagner, Verdi, Donizetti, and Thomas that she herself performed at that very Roman venue, making full use of her remarkable vocal range and singular virtuoso abilities to leave a mark that has never been surpassed.
Callas Tribute Programme Sponsor: PPC (Public Power Company)
Lead Donor of the GNO & Callas Tribute Programme Donor:
THE STAVROS NIARCHOS FOUNDATION
Visual arts programme • New production
Music and Visual Arts Cycle, A Greek National Opera – NEON co-production
The Artist on the Composer
22, 23, 24 September 2023
Starts at: 19.30, 21.00
Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera – SNFCC
Third Commission: Ioanna Pantazopoulou
The Artist on the Composer programme curators: Giorgos Koumendakis (GNO Artistic Director) – Elina Kountouri (ΝΕΟΝ Director)
This production is made possible by a Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] grant for enhancing the GNO’s artistic outreach. NEON is solely funded by its founder Dimitris Daskalopoulos.
The Artist on the Composer –a pioneering programme run by the Greek National Opera in collaboration with the NEON Organisation– connects contemporary artists with classical music and opera to forge a singular synergy of different art forms within a single unified whole.
For its third iteration, The Artist on the Composer programme is commissioning the artist Ioanna Pantazopoulou to create an immersive installation in which visual art and music invite audiences to discover a magical, fairy tale world.
Ioanna Pantazopoulou (b. 1984 Athens, Greece) lives and works in New York, USA. She creates ephemeral sculptural monuments out of unusual materials, that tell a story. The sculptures follow the principles of architecture without being trapped in them. They overturn the notion of experience and participation, they attempt – through unexpected collisions – to create new connections between the past and the present, of what is lost and found.
Pantazopoulou received both her BA (2007) and MA (2009) in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design (London, UK). Her work has been exhibited at numerous venues, including: deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (MA, USA); B.A.M. (the Brooklyn Academy of Music – NY, USA); SCAD Gutstein Gallery (GA, USA); Culture Lab (FL, USA); SAFE Gallery (NY, USA); JAG Projects (NY, USA); Situations Gallery (NY, USA); NADA Miami (FL, USA); Grand Union Gallery (Birmingham, UK); Primetime Gallery (NY, USA); MOMus–Museum Alex Mylona (Athens, GR); Hydra School Projects (Hydra, GR); and NEON (Athens, GR). Her works appear in a number of permanent collections: the Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, the D.Daskalopoulos Collection, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection, and the MCA Chicago Collection. Pantazopoulou is represented in Greece by the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Centre.
The Artist on the Composer programme launched in 2019 with a work commissioned from the artist Nikos Navridis. Noli me tangere –an art installation featuring musicians, choreographers, and performers– deconstructed the operatic conventions of a classic music spectacle.
For the programme’s second commission in 2022, the award-winning Greek film director Yorgos Lanthimos created the short film Bleat – a new work of cinema screened to the accompaniment of live orchestral music.
Lead Donor of the GNO & GNO’s participation supported by Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Opera • Revival
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Dmitri Shostakovich
21, 24, 27, 31 October & 5, 9 November 2023
Starts at: 19.30
Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera – SNFCC
Conductor: Fabrizio Ventura
Director: Fanny Ardant
Sets: Tobias Hoheisel
Costumes: Milena Canonero, Petra Reinhardt
Movement: Collectif LA(HORDE) – Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer, Arthur Harel
Lighting: Luca Bigazzi
Chorus master: Agathangelos Georgakatos
In the lead roles: Svetlana Sozdateleva, Sergey Semishkur, Yanni Yannissis, Yannis Christopoulos
With Soloists of the Greek National Opera, and the GNO Orchestra and Chorus
The Greek National Opera is reviving one of the most popular productions to have graced its stage in recent years. Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk –the Shostakovich opera that tackles the place of women within pre-revolutionary rural Russia– is returning to the Stavros Niarchos Hall in a production directed by Fanny Ardant, working with an all-star international creative team.
This iconic 20th-century opera owes much of its power to the great variety inherent within the music composed for it by Dmitri Shostakovich: grittily realistic in its action and love scenes, and throughout the murder of Zinoviy, the music is also intensely poetic within its ferocity. The work distinctly sets itself apart, not only through its rawness and brutality but also because it is affecting on an equally deep level – and not just in its climactic scene, which manages to capture and encapsulate centuries of pain and deprivation in Russia.
Directing a work of opera for the first time, Fanny Ardant created a bold and poetic production, one that spotlights such elements as personal freedom and daring, as well as blazing extremes. “Lady Macbeth sets a mirror before us. And in it, we see our own selves. Lady Macbeth is our wild reflection, restless and free. How can the part of ourselves that fights back against the law survive within conventional, homogenised society? To love criminals is a risk. And it is one I take. I love Katerina Ismailova. She is not only one of Leskov’s characters in an opera by Shostakovich – no, she is also an ever-present individual, even in our own time. And if we pay close enough attention, we may well encounter her,” notes Fanny Ardant.
The production features sets by the award-winning German scenic designer Tobias Hoheisel, costumes created by the four-time Oscar-winning Milena Canonero in partnership with the acclaimed German costume designer Petra Reinhardt, movement by the French artist collective LA(HORDE) (Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer, and Arthur Harel), and lighting by the award-winning Italian cinematographer Luca Bigazzi.
Appearing in the lead roles are Svetlana Sozdateleva –who, following her performance at the GNO in 2019, went on to play the role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York to great success– alongside Sergey Semishkur, Yanni Yannissis, Yannis Christopoulos, and others. Conducting is Fabrizio Ventura.
GNO lead donor Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Opera • New production
Les Éclairs
Philippe Hersant
Libretto: Jean Echenoz
16, 19, 21 November 2023
Starts at: 19.30 (Sunday at: 18.30)
Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera – SNFCC
In co-production with the Opéra Comique (Paris)
Conductor: Elias Voudouris
Director: Clément Hervieu-Léger
Artistic collaboration: Frédérique Plain
Sets: Aurélie Maestre
Costumes: Caroline de Vivaise
Lighting: Bertrand Couderc
Sound design: Jean-Luc Ristord
Chorus master: Agathangelos Georgakatos
With Soloists of the Opéra Comique (Paris) and the Greek National Opera
With the Orchestra and Chorus of the Greek National Opera
This production is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) to enhance the GNO’s artistic outreach.
The second co-production to be presented by the Greek National Opera and the Opéra Comique (Paris), as part of their strategic partnership, is Les Éclairs: the third opera to be written by the award-winning French composer Philippe Hersant, with a libretto by the internationally renowned French author Jean Echenoz based on the life story of Nikola Tesla. Les Éclairs is a musical journey through New York during the Industrial Revolution that traces the turbulent life of the ethnic Serb cosmopolitan dandy and “mad” scientist Nikola Tesla.
Tesla was born in 1956, in what was then the Austrian Empire. Right up until his death in New York in 1943, corporations and the public have been torn when it comes to the contentious use of his inventions, when Tesla himself had only one aim: the broader application of his discoveries for the benefit of humankind. In 2010, ten years after Tesla’s archive and patents were added to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register, Echenoz published a biography of the scientist titled Des Éclairs (“Lightning”). In 2016, the Opéra Comique commissioned the author to write a new libretto titled Les Éclairs based on his book about Tesla. This is one of those rare instances where an opera libretto existed before the music had been written – and in fact, before a composer had even been selected. Three years later, the Opéra Comique commissioned the composer Philippe Hersant to write a new opera based on Echenoz’s text.
The production would be created in 2021, conducted by Ariane Matiakh, directed by Clément Hervieu-Léger, and featuring the work of a young team of Opéra Comique artists. Les Éclairs delves into the fate of Nikola Tesla, known as Gregor in this opera – one that teeters between fairy tale and drama. Arriving in New York in 1884, Gregor is haunted by his visions. He wants to develop revolutionary applications of electrification but makes the “mistake” of prioritising science over profit. When industrialists plunder and pervert his inventions, he takes solace in lightning shows and the company of birds.
Sponsor PPC (Public Power Company)
GNO lead donor & production donor Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Exhibition
UNBOXING CALLAS:
An Archival Exploration of the Dimitris Pyromallis Collection and the GNO Archive
26 November 2023 – January 2024
Second floor of the National Library of Greece – SNFCC
Curator: Vassilis Zidianakis / ATOPOS cvc
Curatorial associate: Steffy Stouri
Consultant: Dimitris Pyromallis
Research associate: Sophia Kompotiati
With the artists: Aggeliki Bozou, Petros Efstathiadis, Panagiotis Evangelidis, Alexis Fidetzis, Eleftheria Kotzaki, Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Aristeidis Lappas, Lykourgos Porfyris, Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou, Maria Varela
Appearing in the parallel events programme: Yannis Belonis, Alexandros Efklidis, Fatma Fayade, Giorgos Koumendakis, Stella Kourmpana, Helena Matheopoulos, Panaghis Pagoulatos, Tota Pritsa, Zoi Tzamtzi
As part of the celebrations marking the centennial anniversary of Maria Callas’ birth, the Greek National Opera presents the second part of Unboxing Callas, an arts programme curated by Vassilis Zidianakis inspired by the act of unboxing made popular by online communities – that is, a ritual process documenting first contact with an object.
The Unboxing Callas: An Archival Exploration of the Dimitris Pyromallis Collection and the GNO Archive exhibition is inspired by the private stories, memories, and archival effects of Maria Callas, and seeks to give a collectivist artistic chronicle of her career.
The exhibited objects are drawn from the archival collections of the Greek National Opera, and from other collections it has recently acquired, such as the archive of the collector Dimitris Pyromallis dedicated to the life and artistry of Maria Callas, and the photographic archive of Kleisthenes. The exhibition will also be showcasing unique materials drawn from the Katina Paxinou – Alexis Minotis Archive –courtesy of the Hellenic Literary and Historical Archive (ELIA) of the National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation (MIET)– exhibited alongside pieces lent by the Yannis Tsarouchis Foundation. Original works by contemporary artists, inspired by this newly-assembled archive in its entirety, will also be presented.
This is to be a performative exhibition of archival materials, with all its content presented on large worktops, as if in a large lab where researchers and artists are at work on the gathered archive – classifying, conserving, recording, cataloguing, and reinterpreting its artefacts.
The combination of various archives and original artworks within the framework of this exhibition functions as a corrective curatorial practice, both through the narratives it offers, and by means of the conservation, archival, and documentation practices used during its formulation – practices that are set to continue for the duration of the exhibition as part of a parallel programme. Furthermore, the exhibition design is thoroughly sustainable since it utilises archival boxes and existing GNO structures that are suitable for reuse. The original artworks offer access to stories and viewpoints that have been silenced or overlooked by dominant narratives, providing an opportunity for a re-examination of the legend surrounding Callas while also ensuring her artistic achievements remain ever unadulterated.
Free admission
Callas Tribute Programme Sponsor: PPC
Lead Donor of the GNO & Callas Tribute Programme Donor:
THE STAVROS NIARCHOS FOUNDATION
Screening
Mary, Mariana, Maria – The Unsung Greek Years of Callas
A documentary by Vasilis Louras
2 December 2023
Starts at: 19.30
Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera – SNFCC
Concept, research, script: Vasilis Louras
Direction: Michalis Asthenidis, Vasilis Louras
Cinematography: Fotis Zygouris
Producer: Stella Angeletou
Production management artistic associate: Io Kalochristou
Research consultants: Aris Christofellis, Sophia Kompotiati
A GNO co-production with ESCAPE Productions
Premiering on 2 December 2023 inside the Stavros Niarchos Hall –100 years to the day since the birth of Maria Callas– is a new documentary film about the greatest soprano of the 20th century, who took the first major steps of her career in Greece. This documentary by Vasilis Louras, co-produced by the Greek National Opera with ESCAPE Productions, focuses its attentions on the years in which she received her arts training and performed her first roles at the Greek National Opera (1937-1945), and on her three later appearances in Greece: at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus (1957) as part of the Athens Festival, and at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus (1960 and 1961) with the Greek National Opera.
In 1937, when she first arrived in Greece at the age of 14, Mary Kalogeropoulou began taking singing classes at the Greek National Conservatoire, tutored by Maria Trivella. By 1938, she had made her first public appearance, at the Parnassos Literary Society as part of the Conservatoire’s annual showcase. 1939 saw her enter the most important phase of her training, when she enrolled at the Athens Conservatoire to study under the legendary Spanish soprano Elvira de Hidalgo.
One year later, Hidalgo recommended her to Costis Bastias, Director of the Greek National Opera and the National (then known as the Royal) Theatre of Greece, proposing that he hire Kalogeropoulou at the Opera as a member of the chorus, thus allowing her to earn the funds she needed to continue her studies. Her first contract with the Greek National Opera is dated 20 June 1940, with the 17-year-old soprano signing her name as Mariana Kalogeropoulou. From 1940 through until 1945 (when she would return to New York), during the dark days of the Second World War, Kalogeropoulou would take on her first major roles. Despite her difficult relationship with her mother, the hostility she faced from a portion of her peers, and the injustices she suffered following the German withdrawal, Maria would go on to leave Greece in September 1945 a fully-primed prima donna, widely known among devotees of the Greek National Opera in Athens, with a sound training and a great deal of experience performing on stage. It is certainly no coincidence that, following an audition just a few months later, the Metropolitan Opera in New York offered the young soloist her first contract. In 1957, Maria Meneghini-Callas would return to Athens to open the Athens Festival at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, but found herself the target of shameful attacks made by the Greek media and political establishment of the time. In 1960, by which time she went by the name Maria Callas, she accepted an invitation extended by Costis Bastias to perform the title role in a production of Bellini’s Norma at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, and the lead in Cherubini’s Medea at the same venue the following year.
Through the use of archival materials, interviews with both her peers and with persons who experienced the events in question first-hand, and interviews given later by Callas herself, this documentary seeks to gather together snippets of information from every possible source, as well as details that record, recount, and cast light on that untold –yet pivotal for her later evolution– time in Callas’ life that has been underestimated or even ignored by dozens of attempts to present her life story to date.
Callas Tribute Programme Sponsor: PPC
Lead Donor of the GNO & Callas Tribute Programme Donor:
THE STAVROS NIARCHOS FOUNDATION
Opera • Revival
La Bohème
Giacomo Puccini
9, 12, 17, 27, 29, 31 December 2023 & 2 January 2024
Starts at: 19.30 (Sunday at: 18.30)
Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera – SNFCC
Conductor: Ondrej Olos
Director: Graham Vick
Revival director: Katerina Petsatodi
Sets, costumes: Richard Hudson
Lighting: Giuseppe di Iorio
Children’s chorus mistress: Konstantina Pitsiakou
Chorus master: Agathangelos Georgakatos
In the lead roles: Yannis Christopoulos, Vassiliki Karayanni, Cellia Costea, Dionysios Sourbis, Nikos Kotenidis, Tassos Apostolou, and others
With Soloists of the Greek National Opera, and the GNO Orchestra and Chorus
Seven years after the last performance of La Bohème at the Greek National Opera, Giacomo Puccini’s timeless, much-loved masterpiece is making its return in an iconic production directed by Graham Vick – a true bohemian of the opera world who recently passed away.
Set against the backdrop of an icy Paris at Christmastime, La Bohème speaks of the love between the poet Rodolfo and the seamstress Mimì, from the moment they meet in a freezing garret through to the moment of her death from consumption. With his music, Puccini makes audiences run the gamut of emotions is ways sublime: joy and abandon, great love and despair. La Bohème is based on the novella Scènes de la vie de bohème (“Scenes of Bohemian Life” – 1845/48, 1851) by Henri Murger, and was first presented in 1896 at the Teatro Regio in Turin, conducted by Arturo Toscanini.
The Greek National Opera is paying tribute to Graham Vick –“the man saving opera in Britain,” as The Telegraph once wrote– and presenting his take on La Bohème, the action of which he chose to pluck from 19th-century Paris and place in 21st-century Athens, creating a landmark production for the Greek opera scene in the process.
“We attempted to reveal the essence of the work so as to have something that was as universal to Athens 2007 as to any other time. Not so much as timelessness as the fact that humanity never changes; death is death, poverty is poverty, students are students,” explains Vick in his director’s note, written for the production’s premiere during the 2007/08 season.
Whatever his setting –everywhere from La Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Opéra national de Paris, the English National Opera and Royal Opera House in London, the Salzburg Festival, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and the Bolshoi and Mariinsky Theatres, right through to warehouse and factory spaces in Birmingham– Graham Vick was a director who knew how to be bold – how to experiment with and creatively confound the conventions and clichés traditionally associated with the opera arts. Beyond this production of La Bohème, he also partnered with the GNO to stage Tannhäuser (2009) and the Cavalleria Rusticana – Pagliacci double bill (2011).
The production features sets by Richard Hudson and lighting by Giuseppe di Iorio.
GNO lead donor Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Ballet • Revival
The Nutcracker
Konstantinos Rigos / Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
23, 24, 28, 30 December 2023 & 3, 4, 5 January 2024
Starts at: 19.30 (Sunday at: 18.30)
Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera – SNFCC
Conductor: Yorgos Ziavras
Choreographer, director, sets: Konstantinos Rigos
Costumes: Deux Hommes
Lighting: Perikles Mathiellis
Associate architect: Mary Tsagari
Video design: Vasilis Kehagias
Children’s chorus mistress: Konstantina Pitsiakou
With the Orchestra, Principal Dancers, Soloists, Demi-Soloists, Corps de ballet, and Children’s Chorus of the GNO (as part of its educational mission)
Featuring students of the GNO Professional Dance School
GNO Ballet Director Konstantinos Rigos is revisiting The Nutcracker with a view to further elaborating the choreography he first presented in 2022. Indeed, his borderline obsessive engagement with his favourite composer –Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky– has produced numerous renderings over the course of his artistic career.
In this take on The Nutcracker, Rigos views the work from the perspective of children who find themselves pushed to the margins and forced to forge their own dreams in a world “wrecked by grown-ups”. The stage set for this production is a glass room –a kind of display case– inside which Marie-Clara dreams away, going on a journey through the imagination. The production’s Christmas tree is a plastic miniature set inside this glass case of a room – Marie-Clara sees the real tree only on a screen. This Gen Z Nutcracker walks the line between contemporary visuals and classical dance traditions. The costumes by Deux Hommes are a colourful and impressive mix of pop and glam haute couture pieces, national costumes, and fabrics inspired by past GNO productions.
“Christmas Eve finds Marie-Clara opening presents from her godfather to discover a strange toy: her beloved Nutcracker. Inside her delicate childhood world, dreams and reality sweetly intertwine. In the arms of her Nutcracker, she is to experience the most amazing dreams – but also the most terrifying nightmares. Drawing on a new era, the GNO Ballet’s Nutcracker foregrounds the dark as much as the bright and spectacular aspects of this famous fairy tale. A strange new world is forged on stage, in which Marie-Clara’s glass case of a room encounters the colourful, radiant objects that hover over the stage and the baroque portals that lead down into the subterranean depths of the Mouse Kingdom, but also the brilliantly-lit Christmas tree,” notes Rigos.
The Nutcracker is rightly considered one of the most popular ballets in the repertoire since the emotional power and theatricality of Tchaikovsky’s music never fails to captivate audiences, enchanting both young and old alike. In its initial two-act form, choregraphed by Lev Ivanov and with a libretto by Marius Petipa on the basis of which Tchaikovsky composed his music, The Nutcracker was first presented at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg on 18 December 1892. The original plot is based on the E. T. A. Hoffman story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.
GNO lead donor Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Opera double bill • New production
Cavalleria Rusticana – Pietro Mascagni &
Pagliacci – Ruggero Leoncavallo
25, 28 January & 1, 4, 8, 11 February 2024
Starts at: 19.30 (Sunday at: 18.30)
Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera – SNFCC
Conductor: Paolo Carignani
Director: Nikos Karathanos
Sets, costumes: Leslie Travers
Chorus master: Agathangelos Georgakatos
In the title roles: Ekaterina Gubanova, Arsen Soghomonyan, Dimitri Platanias, Cellia Costea, Dionysios Sourbis, Yannis Kalyvas, and others
With Soloists of the Greek National Opera, and the GNO Orchestra
The Greek National Opera presents a new production of opera’s most popular double bill, directed by Nikos Karathanos. Acclaimed as one of Greece’s most important theatre directors, Karathanos will be making his opera repertoire debut with a new take on two of the great verismo operas –Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci– in his signature poetic yet realistic style. The production features sets and costumes by the acclaimed British designer Leslie Travers, who impressed audiences with his scenography for the GNO’s recent production of Bluebeard’s Castle.
Cavalleria Rusticana (“Rustic Chivalry”) and Pagliacci (“Clowns”) are the two key works of verismo (from the Italian word “vero”, meaning “true”) –a tradition that sought to bring greater realism to Italian opera– and also the best-loved double bill in the history of opera.
Cavalleria Rusticana won the 1890 competition for one-act operas run by the Italian music publisher Edoardo Sonzogno, who was seeking fresh talent in among a new generation of Italian composers. Two years later, Pagliacci –an opera in two acts, with a prologue– was presented in Milan, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, to instant success. The aria “Vesti la giubba” (“Put on the costume” that includes the phrase “ridi, pagliaccio” – “laugh, clown”) found global fame thanks to the legendary Italian tenor Enrico Caruso and, to this very day, remains synonymous with opera itself as an art form.
Taking a distance from the fervour and high-flown ideals of Romantic operas, these two short operas recount the passions of common, ordinary people living in southern Italy. The passionate intensity of their music –which only heightens the drama and deepens the emotion– has also bestowed timeless longevity upon these operas, which have endured as core works of repertoire at opera houses across the world since their premiere.
Karathanos had this to note about these two works: “Never has so much blood drawn so much applause. Never has such a crime borne such music – the legendary Caruso could not escape this music, but then nor could Coppola and his Godfather, or Scorsese, or the Mafia itself… Indeed, none of us could escape it! Slipping as it did into our kitchens to liven and elate our afternoons, tailing us in the evenings –back when we were young, leaving the house freshly-bathed, scrubbed clean, our hair parted down the middle– and begriming us all night long. No mother, no lover ever managed to resist singing –under their breath or, better yet, at the top of their voices– those arias heard in Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, as they cooked, as they flirted ferociously. No-one –be they poor, tall or stout, deep, shallow or rich– could ever resist the idea that they, in fact, are the ones singing ‘Vesti la giubba’. In such moments, an audience is not simply watching a performance. No – our very youth bleeds.”
Sponsor National Bank of Greece
GNO lead donor Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Ballet • New production
Carmen
Johan Inger / Rodion Shchedrin – Georges Bizet
7, 10, 14, 15, 18, 25 February 2024
Starts at: 19.30 (Sunday at: 18.30)
Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera – SNFCC
Conductor: Ektoras Tartanis
Choreographer: Johan Inger
Dramaturg: Gregor Acuña-Pohl
Music: Rodion Shchedrin – Georges Bizet
Reorchestration of the music by Bizet: Álvaro Domínguez Vázquez
Music composition: Marc Álvarez
Sets: Curt Allen Wilmer and Leticia Gañán (AAPEE) with studio deDos
Costumes: David Delfín
Lighting: Tom Visser
With the Orchestra, Principal Dancers, Soloists, Demi-Soloists, and Corps de Ballet of the Greek National Opera
This production is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) to enhance the GNO’s artistic outreach.
The Greek National Opera Ballet presents a new production of the ballet Carmen, choreographed by the great Swedish choreographer Johan Inger and first presented by the Compañía Nacional de Danza, Madrid in 2015.
Acclaimed dancer and choreographer Johan Inger –who has carved himself a long and exceptionally successful career, both at Nederlands Dans Theater and at other major European dance companies– created the ballet Carmen for the Compañía Nacional de Danza, where it proved highly popular. Inger took on the challenge and the opportunity of creating a new choreography for Bizet’s heroine –considered a symbol of love and freedom– and his prime concern was to offer up a new take on this famous story. To this end, he decided to focus on the issue of violence, approaching it through the eyes of a child. From this viewpoint, Inger invites audiences to watch the action through a filter of innocence.
The choreographer notes: “My Carmen is not only based on the female protagonist of the story; like Mérimée’s original, my ballet also focuses on Don José’s love sickness – on a man who, unable to accept the freedom of his beloved, sets forth on a path down to hell, driven by his primal instincts: passion and revenge. There is an element of mystery in this character: it could be a child, it could be Don José. It could even be us, with our primeval goodness lacerated by the experience of violence which, though short-lived, may have negatively influenced our lives and our ability to relate to others forever.”
In this choreography by Inger, the ballet version of the Carmen story by Rodion Shchedrin – Georges Bizet enters into dialogue with music written by Marc Álvarez. The production also features dramaturgy by Gregor Acuña-Pohl, sets by Curt Allen Wilmer and Leticia Gañán, costumes by David Delfín, and lighting by Tom Visser.
GNO lead donor & production donor Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Opera • New production
First staging by the Greek National Opera
Die Walküre
Richard Wagner
10, 13, 16, 19, 24, 31 March 2024
Starts at: 17.30
Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera – SNFCC
In co-production with the Royal Danish Opera
Conductor: Philippe Auguin
Director: John Fulljames
Sets, costumes: Tom Scutt | Lighting: D. M. Wood
Chorus master: Agathangelos Georgakatos
In the lead roles: Catherine Foster, Tommi Hakala, Stephan Vinke, Marina Prudenskaya, Petros Magoulas, and others
With Soloists of the Greek National Opera, and the GNO Orchestra and Chorus
This production is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) to enhance the GNO’s artistic outreach.
The first presentation of a work by Richard Wagner at the new home of the Greek National Opera is finally here: Die Walküre –an international GNO co-production with the Royal Danish Opera– is coming to the Stavros Niarchos Hall, with Philippe Auguin conducting, and acclaimed British director John Fulljames staging the production.
Die Walküre (“The Valkyrie”) –one of the most significant yet also popular operas the world over, being staged here by the Greek National Opera for the first ever time– is the second of four parts that comprise Der Ring des Nibelungen (“The Ring of the Nibelung”) by Richard Wagner. Modelled on Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy, Wagner spent many years composing this epic work. It sprang from the ideological ferment that held sway in the Germanic sphere during the mid-19th century, in which the composer was enmeshed from 1841 through until 1849, while living in Dresden. Drawing his inspiration from northern European legend, Wagner –who also wrote the libretto– wanted to critique the early-industrial society of his time, the institution of marriage, and power relations through his Ring cycle. In music terms, Die Walküre is an intensely dramatic work that introduced many musical innovations; it would shape the future course of the art form and influence generations of composers to come. The “Ride of the Valkyries” remains famous to this day – a piece used by Francis Ford Coppola in his 1979 feature film Apocalypse Now.
The director John Fulljames had this to note about the production: “We set the opera in a fictional universe which holds in balance the mythic and the real. This world resonates with today without being tied down to a time and place. The central character of this opera is really Wotan – as he comes to terms with the consequences of his choices, realising his grand scheme will collapse and that he must abandon first his son and then his daughter, and face forward to his death. The death though is not just his own – there is also a broader ecological context as the world he has exploited faces a death. We see him as holding 21st-century power – so not a 19th-century industrialist, as he has so often been seen, but instead a creative entrepreneur; perhaps an architect or the leader of a vast media empire.”
GNO lead donor & production donor Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Opera • New production
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogonny
Kurt Weill / Bertolt Brecht
12, 14, 17, 19, 21, 25 April 2024
Starts at: 19.30 (Sunday at: 18.30)
Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera – SNFCC
Conductor: Miltos Logiadis
Director: Yannis Houvardas
Sets: Eva Manidaki
Costumes: Ioanna Tsami
Lighting: Reinhard Traub
Chorus master: Agathangelos Georgakatos
In the lead roles: Anna Agathonos, Christos Kechris, Tassos Apostolou, Marissia Papalexiou, Yannis Kalyvas, Haris Andrianos, Yanni Yannissis, and others
With Soloists of the Greek National Opera, and the GNO Orchestra and Chorus
A new production of this 20th-century masterpiece by Brecht and Weill is being staged by the great Greek theatre director –and former Artistic Director of the National Theatre of Greece– Yannis Houvardas. Following the huge success enjoyed by his 2018 production of Janáček’s The Makropulos Affair, Houvardas is returning to the Greek National Opera to present the “golden city of our dreams that crumbles to dust and is effaced before our very eyes” inside the Stavros Niarchos Hall at the SNFCC – a political take on the work, with “moments of exasperation and despair”.
This political-satirical opera with a libretto by Bertolt Brecht and music by Kurt Weill was first presented in Leipzig in 1930, but was banned by the Nazis just a few years later. The work traces the rise and fall of a city built for profit and pleasure, and is a critique of the capitalist system, as considered from within the ideological framework of inter-war Germany’s Weimar Republic.
Weill composed some of his best-known songs for this opera –including “Alabama Song” and “Benares Song”– that would go on to be pulled out and sung separately by world-famous performers – everyone from Lotte Lenya to The Doors and David Bowie.
As was common in the early decades of the 20th century, and against a backdrop of dialogue between classical and commercial music, Kurt Weill experimented with various forms, such as jazz and ragtime, that he incorporated into the music vocabulary of the work.
Yannis Houvardas notes the following about his new staging of this opera by Brecht and Weill:
“Let us set off at last for Mahogonny, the golden city of our dreams that lies along the Shores of Solace, far from the bustle of the world.
Here, in Mahogonny, life is glorious.
But even here, in Mahogonny, there are moments of exasperation and despair.
The time has come to crushingly answer God’s questions about our sinful lives.
Glorious Mahogonny crumbles to dust and is effaced before our very eyes.
Inside the epic, spectacular, and resolutely artificial world forged by Brecht and Weill, global capitalism dances in the spurred boots of Texan pioneers while holding the long-barrelled pistols of Wild West gunfighters. And when it sings, it takes on the macho voice of John Wayne and the delicate breathiness of girls whiling away all their time –day and night– inside the drunken saloons.”
GNO lead donor Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Ballet • New production
Coppélia
Edward Clug / Léo Delibes, Milko Lazar
11, 12, 15, 17, 18 May 2024
Starts at: 19.30 (Sunday at: 18.30)
Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera – SNFCC
Concept, libretto, choreography: Edward Clug
Sets: Marko Japelj, Nika Zupanc
Costumes: Leo Kulaš
Lighting: Tomaž Premzl
Dramaturgy: Sarah Brusis, Maximilian Schaffenberger
With the Principal Dancers, Soloists, Demi-Soloists, and Corps de Ballet of the Greek National Opera
A new production of the ballet Coppélia is to be presented by the Greek National Opera Ballet, choreographed by the acclaimed Slovenian choreographer Edward Clug, one of the most important European artists active in the dance scene today.
Swanhilda is about to be married to Franz but begins to doubt his love for her when he turns his attentions to the mysterious Coppélia. Swanhilda discovers –quite by chance– that the exquisitely beautiful Coppélia is in fact just a mechanical doll, and comes up with a plan to win back her fiancé’s heart. This classical ballet by Delibes is based on the E. T. A. Hoffman story “Der Sandmann” (“The Sandman”), except here the borderline terrifying presence of a living doll is set within an ideal world.
Edward Clug manages to combine both sides of this story by means of a contemporary dance movement vocabulary, supplementing the lively original music by Léo Delibes with new pieces by Milko Lazar. The sets created by designer Nika Zupanc create an enchanting atmosphere on stage that embraces Coppélia. Clug brings a mysterious and strange world to life here through the magic of beauty.
The choreographer notes: “Coppélia is one of the oldest and most beloved classical ballets. It is loosely adapted from a story found in the E. T. A. Hoffman book Die Nachtstück (“The Night Pieces”), using elements of its plot. From the very start, I knew that I needed to strengthen this plot that was originally designed to ‘entertain’ a 19th-century audience – my intent was to make it more appealing in order to engage today’s audiences. To this end, I began work on a new libretto, and also decided to work with my longstanding collaborator Milko Lazar on a supplemental score that would emphasise the dark, Romantic atmosphere of the original Sandman story and stand in contrast to Delibes’ more delightful Romanticism, while retaining the charms of the original ballet.”
GNO lead donor Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Opera • New production
Turandot
Giacomo Puccini
2, 5, 8, 11 June 2024
Starts at: 21.00
Odeon of Herodes Atticus
As part of the Athens Epidaurus Festival
Conductor: Philippe Auguin
Director: Andrei Șerban
Sets, costumes: Chloé Obolensky
Lighting: Jean Kalman
Chorus master: Agathangelos Georgakatos
In the lead roles: Catherine Foster, Cellia Costea, Petros Magoulas, Yannis Christopoulos, Yannis Kalyvas and others
With Soloists of the Greek National Opera, and the GNO Orchestra and Chorus
To mark the centennial anniversary of Giacomo Puccini’s death, the Greek National Opera has commissioned two leading artists of the opera scene to create a new production of Turandot, the composer’s final opera. The production is to be staged by Andrei Șerban – one of the most celebrated theatre and opera directors working anywhere today, internationally renowned for his innovative and iconoclastic directorial approach. Alongside the sensational career he has carved out for himself at theatres across Europe and America, and his teaching at Columbia University in New York, Șerban has also directed iconic opera productions at the world’s most major opera houses and festivals, some of which –such as his Turandot in London, Werther in Vienna, and Lucia di Lammermoor in Paris– have remained in repertory and continue to be performed over the decades.
The production’s sets and costumes are to be created by the great, globally renowned Greek designer Chloé Obolensky in what is her first collaboration with the GNO. Obolensky began working in the theatre as an assistant to Yannis Tsarouchis and an associate of the Visconti collaborator Lila de Nobili, and went on to work closely with Peter Brook, creating sets and costumes for a series of his iconic theatre and film productions, including The Mahabharata. Her work for the opera includes historic productions for the Salzburg and Aix-en-Provence Festivals, La Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the English National Opera, La Monnaie, and the Opéra Comique in Paris, while her work on the production of Antigone directed by Lefteris Vogiatzis and presented at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus also garnered rave reviews.
Giacomo Puccini’s final opera –Turandot– is the grandest of them all. The plot unfolds in another era, in far-flung, unfamiliar China, where Princess Turandot is to marry whoever can answer the three riddles she sets. Those who tried and failed paid with their lives. Dazzled by her exquisite beauty, a prince –a stranger– insists on trying his luck, and succeeds. But, even though he solves her riddles, Turandot refuses to marry him. The prince offers her the chance to free herself of the obligation – if, that is, she can discover his name before the break of dawn.
The roots of this tale lie in Persian poetry dating back to the 12th century. In 1762, the story of Turandot was adapted into a play by the Venetian Carlo Gozzi, and later by the German Friedrich Schiller, with Puccini inspired by the latter version. His score combines light-hearted commedia dell’arte details drawn from Gozzi with the deep lyricism that pervades all his operas, but also incorporates an element of grandeur that reflects his conception of Imperial China. In 1924, Puccini died before he could complete the work, leaving the opera unfinished. Turandot was completed by the composer Franco Alfano –on the basis of Puccini’s sketches– back in 1926, while the composer Luciano Berio proposed a new and different ending for the opera in 2001.
Sponsors Mytilineos & Eurobank
GNO lead donor Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Concert
A Tribute to Manolis Kalomiris
June 2024
Starts at: 19.30
Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera – SNFCC
Curation of programme and music materials: Hellenic Music Centre
Conductor: TBA
Soloists: TBA
With the Orchestra and Chorus of the Greek National Opera
This Greek National Opera tribute to Manolis Kalomiris bears dual significance: on the one hand, it spotlights the great Greek composer’s links to music drama and the Greek National Opera; on the other, it showcases two of his works that are completely unknown.
The first part of the evening will feature performances of the recently restored Symphonic Fantasy from The Master Builder, his popular Suite from The Mother’s Ring, and the thrilling symphonic poem Minas the Rebel, Corsair of the Aegean, based on the novel of the same title by Costis Bastias – the founding Director of the GNO. The second part of the evening will present world-first performances of To the Freedom of Crete, a work for choir and orchestra, and The Marble King – an iconic cantata inspired by the Balkan Wars, written in 1914 for two voices, choir and orchestra, and featuring poems by Myrtiotissa.
Of Samian descent, Manolis Kalomiris (1883-1962) was born in Smyrna, where he took his first music lessons – studies he would continue in Athens and Istanbul before going on to study piano, music theory, and composition at the Vienna Conservatory. Kalomiris is considered the founder of a “national school” of Greek music. He drew inspiration from Greek traditions and song, as well as from the poetry and literature of his time. He would compose more than 220 works, including five operas, three symphonies, symphonic poems, a piano concerto, a violin concertino, song cycles for solo voice with both orchestral and piano accompaniments, works for the piano, chamber music, choral music, and pieces for children (both choral and piano works). His operas have been presented over and again by the Greek National Opera.
GNO lead donor Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Opera • Revival
La Traviata
Giuseppe Verdi
27, 28, 30, 31 July 2024
Starts at: 21.00
Odeon of Herodes Atticus
As part of the Athens Epidaurus Festival
Conductor: Pier Giorgio Morandi
Director, choreography, sets: Κonstantinos Rigos
Costumes: Ioanna Tsami
Lighting: Christos Tziogkas
Associate architect: Mary Tsagari
Chorus master: Agathangelos Georgakatos
In the lead roles: Nadine Sierra, Freddie De Tommaso, Dimitri Platanias, and others
With Soloists of the Greek National Opera, and the GNO Orchestra and Chorus
The Greek National Opera’s second summer production at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus is Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata directed by Konstantinos Rigos, first presented at the Roman venue in the summer of 2019 to exceptional success. The ill-starred love harboured by the “Lady of the Camellias” for Alfredo Germont –as envisioned and set to music by Verdi using melodies of singular power that blazon themselves indelibly upon our hearts and minds– is being brought to life once more for four performances, from 27 through until 31 July 2024.
The opera recounts the love of a courtesan for the son of an eminent Parisian household. Their relationship goes down badly with the young man’s family and the couple split, only meeting again a little before the young woman’s death. The premiere of La Traviata at Teatro La Fenice in Venice on 6 March 1853 is often described as one of the biggest failures in opera history. A century and a half later, this Verdi masterpiece stands as one of the most popular works in the repertoire, with hundreds of performances given each year at opera houses across the globe before rapt audiences in their thousands.
Konstantinos Rigos had this to note about the production: “Presenting La Traviata inside the historic Odeon of Herodes Atticus places the work within a challenging yet interesting context: one must find a balance between the overtly exuberant scenes and the private moments. The walls of this ancient odeon impose a sense of timelessness, and inescapably induct the narrative into deep time. In this intermediary space, between past and future, Violetta seems suspended within an era left in limbo, offering her story up to audiences as yet another product for consumption, as she was herself. The Herodium stage space is divided into two distinct realms: closed rooms (that represent the heroine’s psyche) and a scenic world of contrived pleasures dominated by a huge table. These two worlds unfold in parallel, with the heroine reflected in her alter ego, thus giving the conflict inside her tangible form – this is arguably the production’s most significant narrative feature. La Traviata is Violetta herself, which explains the focus on capturing her emotions and projecting them –enlarged– upon the time-worn walls of the Odeon of Herodes Atticus.”
The American opera superstar Nadine Sierra will be performing the role of Violetta Valéry alongside the up-and-coming tenor Freddie De Tommaso in the role of Alfredo Germοnt and with the internationally acclaimed baritone Dimitri Platanias in the role of Giorgio Germοnt.
Sponsor ALPHA BANK
GNO lead donor Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Tickets for the September–December 2023 productions go on sale 31 July 2023 at the GNO Box Office and via ticketservices.gr.