Having completed five years of wandering across the world of music, the GNO Intercultural Orchestra continues its musical journey around the world. Through a multitude of live appearances and a series of collaborations with artists active in the musical tradition of the Eastern Mediterranean, this season, the Intercultural Orchestra introduces its entry into the GNO Sacred Music Festival and plans its participation in a series of other projects that will be conducted in multicultural Athens as well as new collaborations with orchestras abroad. At the same time, it creates the Junior Intercultural Orchestra, as part of its mission.

Orchestra director: Harris Lambrakis

Starts on:

Days & Time: Mondays, 18.00 – 21.00

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Supported by:

The pioneering educational programme Opera Interactively Into Schools for Secondary Education Schools is the continuation of the programme that had been successfully implemented by the Greek National Opera in primary schools from 2012 to 2015. Interactive Opera in Schools, adjusted to the contemporary digital era and the social concerns of today’s teenagers, aims at acquainting young people with the art of opera through their participation in an interactive opera performance.

This school year, Kornilios Selamsis’ opera Offenbach’s La belle Hélène, directed by Yannis Kalavrianos, will be presented live in 85 Junior High Schools across Greece and in a total of 900 schools via online streaming with the help of the Opera Box App. This new performance reintroduces us to the myth of the Helen of Troy from a contemporary perspective while treating issues of gender stereotypes, roles and identities.

Students in the schools that will be visited by the Greek National Opera will have an active role in the programme, enjoying the chance to live up close the unique experience of the making of a performance and get fully involved in it. Under the guidance of the programme’s educators, students will take part in the artistic workshops with the goal of co-creating an original audio, music and visual material that will be integrated into the flow of the performance that will be presented in schools, thus completing the Greek National Opera’s two-day visit there.

Students that will take part in the programme from distance will have the chance to attend the performance digitally and explore the world of opera and music theatre via the educational digital application Opera Box App. Through webinars, the programme’s educators will guide school teachers through the learning goals, will facilitate the understanding of the work that will be presented as part of the programme, and will suggest practices of strengthening creative expression through the school class, as well as methods of creatively using the Opera Box App.

Creative Team

Planning/Implementation: GNO Learning & Participation Department

Coordination manager: Panina Karydi

Educational planning managers: Kiki Kerzeli, Michalis Moschoutis, Kalliroi Papadopoulou, Kristin Sofroniou

Historian/Musicologist: Artemis Ignatidou

Communication manager: Myrsini Vasilopoulou

Offenbach’s La belle Hélène

Opera for teenagers

Score: Kornilios Selamsis

Libretto: Alexandra K*

Director: Yannis Kalavrianos

Sets, Costumes: Petros Touloudis

Choreography/Movement coach: Marianna Kavallieratou

Application can be submitted by 7 October 2022 exclusively via the form you will find here.

The programme is co-funded by the European Union – European Social Fund (ESF) and National Resources (NSRF 2014-2020) through the Operational Programme “Human Resources Development, Education and Lifelong Learning”.

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

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