Kassandra

Alternative Stage founding donor & production donor 

Alternative Stage sponsor: PPC (Public Power Company)

The production is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] to enhance the Greek National Opera’s artistic outreach.

The GNO Alternative Stage opens the artistic season 2024/25 with a new international co-production with the Centro de Experimentación of the esteemed Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.

The monologue Kassandra by the Uruguayan playwright Sergio Blanco becomes an opera after a joint commission by the GNO Alternative Stage and the Centro de Experimentación of the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires to the distinguished Argentine composer Pablo Ortiz. The leading role is performed by the transgender soprano, Maria Castillo de Lima, a true vocal phenomenon, while the production is directed by Diana Theocharidis and Alexandros Efklidis.

Kassandra, the cursed priestess of ancient Greek mythology, possesses the gift of foreseeing the future. However, like all the oracles of the ancient Greek world, she also sees the past; the oracle’s insight encompasses both the present and the absent. Given the gift of prophecy, Kassandra was cursed by the god Apollo for her words to not to be believed by anyone. Inside her, there is inherent both the tragic fate of humanity and that of the stranger, the refugee and the socially and gender marginalised. She sings and speaks in broken English, the English of someone who hardly knows the language and who is driven by the desire to be understood. Kassandra is a heroine who unites time periods and, in this opera, links myth to the present. She also links the aesthetics of the dramaturg Sergio Blanco with those of the composer Pablo Ortiz, creators who together elaborate the incessant oscillation between past, present and future. These universes, so distant from each other, are contained in a single space in the staging conception of Diana Theocharidis and Alexandros Efklidis.

* The world premiere of the opera Cassandra will take place on 23 August 2024 at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires