Britten, Noye’s Fludde

With the participation of the GNO Children's Chorus, a 10-member ensemble of adult musicians and a youth orchestra consisting of the Underground Kids Orchestra, members of the Underground Youth Orchestra, the El Sistema Greece Youth Orchestra and young musicians.
 

For the first time in Greece, in the framework of the 2025 Sacred Music Festival, the GNO presents the opera for children Noye's Fludde (1958) by the English composer Benjamin Britten. The work, written by Britten as a music education initiative for children and young people in England in the 1950s, is based on a medieval play that tells the well-known story of the flood and Noah's ark in a particularly vivid and often comedic fashion. Britten's music explores a wide palette of sounds, from Renaissance polyphony to Indonesian gamelan, using everything from classical instruments to improvised percussion made from cups. Britten's opera requires only two adult singers and a ten-piece ensemble of adult musicians; the rest of the performers are children! In collaboration with the youth orchestras Underground Kids Orchestra and Underground Youth Orchestra, members of the El Sistema Greece Youth Orchestra, independent musicians and the GNO Children's Chorus, director Themelis Glinatsis and visual artist Christina Dimitra began a four-month preparation of the project, where the visual aspect of the production was created by the children of the GNO's Children's Chorus in conjunction with the musical and theatrical development of the show. Above all, Noye's Fludde is, as the composer stated, a "community work" and, with this in mind, all the participants contributed to building a special artistic community that brings together different people with diverse musical qualities, ages and cultural backgrounds with the goals of both presenting a rare music theatre work and creating an original musical and theatrical experience.

Programme:
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Noye's Fludde, op. 59 (1958)
for adults' and children's voices, children's chorus, chamber ensemble and children's orchestra
Text from the collection English Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes

BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Themelis Glynatsis

Born in Athens, he studied comparative literature, classical and contemporary theatre in the UK and completed his PhD at the University of London. He has directed works by Heiner Müller, Stéphane Mallarmé, Sophocles, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Claudine Galea, among others. He directed the work Y los peces salieron a combatir contra los hombres by Angélica Liddell (Athens Epidaurus Festival), Cendrillon by Pauline Viardot, Romanticism (Onassis Stegi), Bérénice by Racine (Athens Epidaurus Festival), Schubert's Winterreise (Greek Art Theatre Karolos Koun, Athens), Salome by Oscar Wilde (Kykladon Street Theatre), Handel's Alcina and Koumendakis' 57 // a passion play, Weisse Rose at the Alternative Stage of the Greek National Opera, where he served as Deputy Chair of the Board of Directors (2018-20). Moreover, he has directed the music performance Splendidissima Gemma: Recomposing Hildegard (Athens Concert Hall), Schönberg's Verklärte Nacht, Act I of Wagner's Die Walküre (Ancient Theatre of Megalopolis), This Is Britten (Lyric South Festival) as well as Calliope Tsoupaki's Capodistrias: Monodrama of a Secret Life (GNO Alternative Stage). In 2023, he directed Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle at the Greek National Opera, a production that was revived in 2024. In March 2025, a new version of This Is Britten was presented at the Thessaloniki Concert Hall.

Konstantina Pitsiakou
A graduate of the Music Department of the University of Cardiff (Wales), she studied, with a scholarship, methodology of teaching, chorus conducting, classical singing and piano at the International Pedagogical Institute Zoltán Kodály (Franz Liszt Academy, Kecskemét, Hungary). Moreover, in Athens she studied singing (diploma) with Christina Yannakopoulou. She has sung with the Patras Contemporary Music Ensemble and the String Quartet of the Municipal Conservatory of Patras, while she has given Early Music concerts with the ensembles Ex Silentio and Os Orphicum. She has collaborated with the Choruses of the GNO and the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, as well as with the Patras Municipal Conservatory Chamber Chorus. She is a member of the Equábili vocal ensemble. She has taught at the Municipal Conservatory of Patras, as well as at the Drama Schools of the National Theatre of Greece and the Patras Municipal and Regional Theatre. Since September 2017, she has been the mistress of the GNO Children's Chorus with numerous productions at the Stavros Niarchos Hall and the Alternative Stage, Odeon of Herodes Atticus, Athens Concert Hall.

Kyriaki Kountouri

Kyriaki Kountouri was born in Paphos, Cyprus in 1997. She studied Orchestral Conducting with professor Miltos Logiadis at the Department of Music Studies of the Ionian University graduating at the top of her class and since 2021 she is a PhD candidate at the same university. She also holds a diploma with honours in Piano Performance (class of Christina Panteli, Toniko Odeio, Athens). She has conducted orchestras such as the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra (ongoing collaboration since 2023), the Municipality of Athens Symphony Orchestra (The Apaches of Athens, Olympia Music Theatre, Dec. 2023, assistant conductor to K. Michailidis), the Symphony Orchestra of the Philharmonic Society of Corfu (assistant conductor to A. Baltas, 2021-22), the Cyprus Youth Symphony Orchestra (Zypriotisches Galakonzert, Musikverein, Nov. 2022, assistant conductor to Y. Kountouris), the Thessaloniki City Symphony Orchestra (The Melody of AELIA, Thessaloniki Concert Hall), the Sistema Europe Youth Orchestra (SEYO 2024, Italy) et al. Since 2022 she is a collaborator of the Greek National Opera Educational & Social Activities participating in educational programmes such as "Opera Interactively Into Schools 2022/23" (tour in high schools all over Greece), "3rd Bell Opera 2023/24" and "3rd Bell Opera 2024/25" (for primary schools in Attica", Silence, the King is Listening (tour in primary schools in Northern Greece). As of September 2023, she is the conductor of the El Sistema Greece Youth Orchestra.

Υanni Yannissis

Greek bass-baritone, he studied singing at the Athens Conservatoire with Kiki Morfoniou and continued his studies in New York under Charles Kellis (Maria Callas scholarship, 1990). He has performed at the most famous opera houses worldwide such as the Metropolitan Opera (New York), La Monnaie (Brussels), Scottish Opera, and Frankfurt Opera House, etc., as Banco (Macbeth), Colline (La bohème), Escamillo (Carmen), Leporello (Don Giovanni), Angelotti and Scarpia (Tosca), Capulet (Roméo et Juliette), and Sharpless (Madama Butterfly), as well as next to Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and under James Levine. At the Greek National Opera he has sung, among others, in operas like Andrea Chénier, Carmen, Fedora, Die Zauberflöte, Anna Bolena, Il trovatore, Peter Grimes, Več Makropulos and Wozzeck. He has received awards and distinctions in international competitions such as the Grand Prix Maria Callas (1987), MEF (1991). In addition, he has performed at the Athens Concert Hall as well as with the Athens State Orchestra, Orchestra of Colours, Music Ensembles of Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation in concerts in Greece and abroad. He has recorded extensively.

Anna Agathonos

Greek mezzo-soprano, she studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, and has been a member of the CNIPAL Opera Studio in Marseille. She worked at the Musiktheater im Revier (Gelsenkirchen, 2001-2010), where she built up an extensive repertoire, at first singing roles for lyric mezzo-soprano and specialising in the bel canto repertoire. Within the years she developed into a dramatic mezzo-soprano singing, among others, Amneris (Aida), Azucena (Il trovatore), Ulrica (Un ballo in maschera), Dalila (Samson et Dalila), Carmen, Cassandre (Les Troyens), Ježibaba (Rusalka), Ortrud (Lohengrin), Madame Flora (The Medium), Old lady (Candide), Witch (Hänsel und Gretel), Baba the Turk (The Rake's Progress). She has performed in numerous European opera theatres (Hannover, Nuremberg, Bonn, Oldenburg, Erfurt, Pforzheim, Klagenfurt, Marseille, Avignon, Rouen) and festivals (Aix-en-Provence, Rossini Opera Festival – Pesaro, Oper Burg Gars). In Greece she has cooperated with the GNO (Il barbiere di Siviglia, La sonnambula, Faust, Falstaff), as well as with the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra (Verdi's Requiem, Beethoven's 9th Symphony). Since 2020/21, she has been a member of the State Theatre at Gärtnerplatz in Munich.

El Sistema Greece

El Sistema Greece Youth Orchestra is an intercultural educational orchestra founded in November 2017. It offers a unique process of group music education, based on the principles and innovative teaching practices of El Sistema Venezuela. The conductor of the orchestra is Kyriaki Kountouri. The orchestra's repertoire ranges between classical symphonic works (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johannes Brahms, Dmitri Shostakovich, Jean Sibelius, Edvard Grieg, Antonín Dvořak), film music (Klaus Badelt, Frederick Loewe, Andrew Lloyd Webber) and orchestral works by composers from Latin America (Arturo Márquez, Pérez Prado, Carlos Garcia). The orchestra aims to promote maximum social inclusion of all its members, to foster safe and meaningful communication between young people from diverse social backgrounds and to provide music education of the highest quality. El Sistema Greece Youth Orchestra has performed in the country's largest theatres such as the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the SNFCC, Megaron the Athens Concert Hall, Thessaloniki Concert Hall, etc.

The Underground Youth Orchestra

The Underground Youth Orchestra with fifteen years of active artistic presence is one of the most important youth symphony orchestras in Greece. Since 2016, it has been active abroad, collaborating with German and American Universities and Institutions. In 2019, following an honorary invitation, the Orchestra participated in the Young Euro Classic International Festival of Youth Orchestras, an invitation given for the first time to a Greek Youth Orchestra. The founder, conductor and artistic director of the orchestra is Costas Eliades. Co-founders are Efstathia Papageorgopoulou and Franc Shestani. Recently, a new orchestra for talented children aged 6-14 years old was created, called the Underground Kids Orchestra, under the direction of the violinist and pedagogue Elli Papagrigoriou and the Artistic Direction of Efstathia Papageorgopoulou. In addition to its artistic activities, UYO, also develops a complex educational program, called UYO Network, with the aim of developing and disseminating orchestral art. At the same time, UYO actively participates in the educational programs of Megaron Athens Concert Hall.

Children's Chorus of the Greek National Opera

The Children's Chorus of the Greek National Opera was founded in September 2012. It has an exclusively educational character and its goals, among others, are the study of choral singing, the cultivation of the wider musical education of its members and the development of the feeling of partnership and cooperation. Till today, the GNO Children's Chorus has participated to great acclaim in numerous productions of the Greek National Opera in such venues as Olympia Theatre, Odeon of Herodes Atticus, Alexandra Trianti Hall (Athens Concert Hall), Stavros Niarchos Hall and Alternative Hall of the GNO (SNFCC), etc and has given numerous concerts, performing a very extensive repertoire, at the Presidential Mansion, the Acropolis Museum, the Pnyx, the Archaeological site of Brauron (Vravrona), the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, etc. The Children's Chorus' first mistress was soprano Mata Katsouli. Since autumn 2017, the ensemble has been directed by Konstantina Pitsiakou. The Chorus consists of about 100 children aged 6 to 15 years old from across Attica.