The successful programme Guitar Express returns this year to the GNO Learning and Participation Department and promises participants new experiences and surprises. With the goal of promoting expression through music and using guitars, voices and songs as its tools, the workshop aims at exploring new paths of knowledge and creativity and at bringing back to the foreground stories and songs from old times, thus becoming a pleasant and relaxing way out of the everyday life routine. The programme includes weekly live music meetings and participants will be given additional material that will help them cultivate their musical perception, study and understand the subject matter, and train themselves in the relaxation of body and mind.

Prior music knowledge is not required.

Planning/Implementation: Kiki Kerzeli

Scientific supervisor: Ioanna Etmektsoglou

Starts: 14 February 2023

Day & Time: Tuesdays, 11.00-13.00

Information: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

An intercultural opera hub for a mixed group of 30 young Athenians and unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors aged 14-18 from across Attica

After the big success of last year’s Co-OPERAtive, the intercultural opera hub for teenagers returns for one more year. The programme, awarded the 2019 Fedora Education Prize, draws inspiration from opera and comes to prove once again the invincible power of music as a common language that can embrace and bridge cultural differences. Those who will participate in the soon-to-be-formed mixed group of the 30 Athenians and unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors aged 14-18 from across Attica, will be asked to create and present their own performance based on personal and spontaneous expression, synergy and team work.

 Artistic team

Starts on: Monday 7 November 2022

Day & Time: Mondays, 17:30-20:30

Age group: 14-18 years

Final performances: tba

*Participants will be selected by open call which will be announced on 10 October 2022.

Alumni Group

The Alumni Group is created this year for those who have completed their participation in Co-OPERAtive and wish to preserve and deepen their relationship with opera and the artistic creation process. The Alumni Group shall enjoy a series of privileges, including the acquaintance with many theatre-related professions, participation in the making of the workshop’s upcoming production, as well as free attendance of selected performances at the Greek National Opera.

In collaboration 

 Supported by

Planning/Implementation: Rafi Company

Scientific associate: Sophia Kompotiati

How do we feel when we suddenly look at something we already know in a totally different way? When our perspective of that which is already familiar to us changes?

Through the programme Metamorphoses, curated by the Rafi Music Theatre Company on its first collaboration with the GNO Learning & Participation Department, children of all ages explore the mysteries/hidden secrets of opera, those things that are not obvious about it, sneaking through the cracks of the notes and words to illuminate them in a different way. Through activities that trigger imagination and creativity, workshops, and meetings/discussions with important guest from diverse fields, participants will have the chance to sharpen their eyes and thinking and shed light upon that which is different and unexpected, expanding their artistic horizons through the contact with a groundbreaking art that timelessly praises human freedom.

Don Giovanni

October 2022

An introduction to directing workshop for teenagers

We direct an aria, we explore our creative freedom and the possibilities of different approaches to artistic creation. Mozart’s music, with its timeless power, carries Don Giovanni’s legend across the centuries. Performances, legends, and original stagings have marked its contact with the audience of our time. But how would a teenager in the time of the MeToo movement direct it? How would they approach the libretto and Mozart’s music? Teenagers converse with university professors specialised in gender and identity issues, singers and GNO set designers to present their own version of the opera through DIY music and visual techniques.

Age group: 11-15

Dates & Time: 22 October, 17.00 – 19.00 & 23 October 2022, 17.00 – 20.00

Speakers: Irene Avramopoulou (assistant professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences), Chrysa Malliamani (opera singer, soprano)

Don Quijote

November 2022

Movement workshop for children

How can we transform ourselves into a hero or a windmill? Can we dance revolution? Can we turn our body into a fairy tale, an adventure, and talk about the value of heroism and revolt without speaking? How can art become a revolutionary act? A workshop for children who transform into Don Quijotes and windmills, reshaping the power and beauty of dreams, imagination and revolution through dance, music and physical theatre.

Age group: 9-12

Dates & time: 26 & 27 November 2022, 17.00 – 19.00

Speakers: TBD

Les contes d’ Hoffmann

December 2022

“Musical” sculpting workshop

Quite often in the world of opera we should not believe our own eyes! Through the power of singing and music and the theater’s technical possibilities, everything seems magical! How can we transform our own selves? Using the famous Doll Aria from Les contes d’ Hoffmann as a vehicle, we attempt to become dolls ourselves, but also sculptors and magicians through crash courses of operatic magic!

Age group: 6-9

Dates & time: 17 & 18 December 2022, 17.00 – 19.00

Speakers: TBD

Falstaff

January 2023

Creative writing workshop – how to write a miniature-libretto

Giuseppe Verdi and his librettist Arrigo Boito offered a reading of Shakespeare’s masterpiece as a hymn to love, flooded with the colours of the Italian Renaissance, but also darker and more atmospheric than the original. Participants will converse with activists and members of the LGTBQ community about the facets of love in 2022, as well as with the protagonists of this year’s GNO production of the same title in order to draw inspiration and pen their own miniature-librettos.

Age group: 13-15

Days & time: 28 January 2022, 17.00 – 19.00 & 29 January 2023, 17.00-20.00

Speakers: Anna Kouroupou (director of Red Umbrella Athens)

Werther

April 2023

Music letters writing workshop for teenagers

How do we write love letters? Do people write love letters in our time? Starting from wondering about the ways love letters via digital applications are different from 19th-century love letters, this workshop urges teenagers to replace pen and keyboard with notes, as a means of expression.

Age group: 13-15

Dates & time: 1 April, 17.00-19.00 & 2 April 2023, 17.00-20.00

Speakers: TBD

Médée

April 2023

Sound and vocal art workshop for teenagers

The workshop revolves around the most basic and common, yet also most moving musical instrument: the human voice. Par excellence performers of emotions – joy, sadness, anger, hope –, opera singers use notes, their throats and bodies, to express all that can’t be said in any other way. The workshop will attempt at a first introduction to precisely these techniques and methods.

Age group: 13-15

Dates & time: 29 April, 17.00-19.00 & 30 April 2023, 17.00-20.00

Speakers: TBD

Madama Butterfly

June 2023

Music and visual arts workshop for children

How is it to be seen as a foreigner? What does foreign mean? What does it feel like to write

stories, create worlds through the eyes of different cultures? Going through the current

intercultural reality, children will converse with young migrants living in Greece and will

work together with visual artist Filippos Vasileiou. They will transform scenes from the opera

Madama Butterfly, building masks, costumes and stage props with references on diverse

cultures, creating their own unique visual version of the work.

Age group: 6-9

Dates & time: 3 & 4 June 2023, 17.00-19.00

Conducted by: Rafi Music Theatre Company, Filippos Vasileiou (sculptor)

Speakers: TBD

Educational Programme Sponsor

Experiential cinema workshop for Junior High School students

Opera Filmmakers, the experiential cinema workshop for Junior High School children comes back for a second year. Participants with a camera at hand will wander the backstage of the Greek National Opera, will unlock the theatre costume and prop rooms, will observe the operation of the mechanisms supporting this grand-scale theatrical stage, and will peep into a ballet, chorus and orchestra rehearsal. And all this, to capture on camera the fascinating secrets hidden in the different stages of the making of an opera performance.

During this process, children will get acquainted with the language of cinema, its means of expression, and the techniques and basic principles of directing. They will also be guided through the selected subject matter and will learn how to draft a screenplay. Moreover, they will be involved in the organisation of the shooting and will share the roles of a film crew before and behind the cameras.

The workshop will be held in 4 meetings of three hours each, on 15, 22, 29 October and 19 November 2022. As part of it, a short film production group will be formed by the participants. The film that will be produced will enter the 22^nd European Meeting of Young People's Audiovisual Creation – Camera Zizanio (03–10/12/2022).

In co-production with the Olympia International Film Festival for Children & Young People

Age group: Junior High School students

Planning: GNO Learning and Participation Department & Olympia International Film Festival for Children & Young People

Coordination manager/Implementation: Nikoleta Leousi

Dates & time:

15 October, 18.00 - 21.00

22 October, 10.00 - 13.00

5 November, 10.00 - 13.00

19 November, 18.00 - 21.00

Applications can be submitted from 1 to 7 October 2022 exclusively via the form you will find here.

Educational Programme Sponsor