Back to the opera | GNO Alternative Stage updated programme October, November, December 2021

 

Back to the opera
GNO Alternative Stage updated programme
October, November, December 2021

 

The Alternative Stage of the Greek National Opera is back to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center and announces its updated October–December 2021 programme. The programme is realised thanks to the support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] grant for the enhancement of the Greek National Opera’s artistic outreach and the creation of its tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution.

The October–December programme of the GNO Alternative Stage consists of music theatre, performance, concerts and productions for the whole family. Works by distinguished composers Calliope Tsoupaki, Marc Monnet, Alexandros Mouzas, Mikis Theodorakis, Anestis Logothetis, Nikos Kypourgos and George Tsontakis, the new production directed by Michail Marmarinos and Akillas Karazisis, a tribute concert to Rigas Feraios with Dimitris Kountouras and Flora Papadopoulou as well as two large bicentennial projects curated by Tzeni Argyriou – Vassilis Gerodimos and Kornilios Selamsis arrive to the Alternative Stage during the last trimester of 2021.

• October ushers in the premiere of the new bicentennial tribute work Capodistrias: Monodrama of a secret life by internationally established composer Calliope Tsoupaki (1, 2, 3/10), Michail Marmarinos’ and Akillas Karazisis’ new production (9, 10, 14, 15, 16/10) and the original performative installation Synthesis, curated by choreographer Tzeni Argyriou and visual artist Vassilis Gerodimos (29, 30, 31/10).
• November brings the music theatre work for the whole family Bibilolo by Marc Monnet and Arno Fabre (5, 6, 7/11), the new, ambitious bicentenary project A Greek Songbook, curated by composer Kornilios Selamsis and with the participation of more than 30 creators (19, 20, 21/11), and Alexandros Mouzas’ new work Shades in Hades, directed by Thomas Moschopoulos (27, 28/11).
• On 4 and 5 December, the Alternative Stage hosts a tribute to the great Mikis Theodorakis: the performance of the song cycle Asikiko Poulaki, as part of the three-year GNO Mikis Theodorakis Cycle. Also in December: a Tribute to Anestis Logothetis on the occasion of the centenary of his birth (8/12), the concert Rigas’ Flute (9/12), the music theatre work for young audiences Silence, the King Is Listening by Nikos Kypourgos, directed by Theo Abazis (first performance: 12/12), and George Tsontakis’ new work The Air of Greece (17, 18/12).
• Concurrently, three new Alternative Stage productions have their premieres on GNO TV: the concert Hebrew Melodies featuring songs by Isaac Nathan and Lord Byron (12/10), the musico-poetic work Martha: A story from Missolonghi by Nikos Xydakis (9/11) and the music theatre production Such A Beautiful and Just Case: Haiti / Greece / 1821 (24/11) by Konstantinos Chatzis.

Tickets for the October-December 2021 productions at the GNO Alternative Stage will go on sale on 4 October 2021 (for the project Synthesis, in particular, on 11 October). You can purchase your tickets at the GNO Box Office (+30 2130885700, daily 09.00-21.00) and ticketservices.gr/en.

It is noted that, according to Official Government Gazette Nº 4214/v.II/13.09.2021, GNO’s venues at the SNFCC will operate at a 85% capacity and only for persons who have been fully vaccinated or have recovered from COVID-19 (audience members need to present a respective valid certificate). Children up to 11 years old must provide a negative self-test result declaration, provided that the test has been taken within the last 24h. Children from 12 to 17 years of age need to present a certificate of vaccination or recovery from COVID-19.

 

Founding Donor to the Alternative Stage and the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution

 

 

 

Music theatre • World premiere / Commissioned by the GNO Alternative Stage
Capodistrias: Monodrama of a secret life
Calliope Tsoupaki
1, 2, 3 October 2021 • Performances start at 18.30 (Sunday 19.00)
GNO Alternative Stage – SNFCC
As part of the tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution
Conductor: Nicolas Vassiliou • Stage director: Themelis Glynatsis • Set & costume designer: Alexia Theodorakis • Video designers: Marios Gampierakis, Chrysoula Korovesi • Lighting designer: Stella Kaltsou • Research consultant: Manto Malamou • Cast: Timos Sirlantzis, Marilena Germanou • With the participation of a 7-member instrumental ensemble

This production, part of a tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org].

The GNO Alternative Stage starts the new season at SNFCC with an ambitious bicentennial tribute production, the original music theatre work Capodistrias: Monodrama of a secret life by Calliope Tsoupaki, conducted by Nikos Vassiliou and directed by Themelis Glynatsis.

The unrequited love between the first governor of the modern Greek State, Ioannis Capodistrias, and Roxandra Sturdza, lady-in-waiting of the Empress Elisabeth of Russia, serves as subject to the new monodrama by composer Calliope Tsoupaki, an important composer of the Greek diaspora, recently awarded the title of Componist des Vaderlands, highest compositional distinction in the Netherlands.

In one of the most romantic episodes of the Greek struggle for independence, Capodistrias and Sturdza (the former a promising politician and diplomat, the latter an educated noblewoman, offspring of a rich Greek Moldavian family) met at the Russian imperial court in 1809 and shared a longstanding, deeply spiritual bond; nevertheless, their love was unconsummated due to their class difference and Capodistrias’ self-sacrificing commitment to the Greek cause. Their relationship blossomed around music: apart from their common political activism concerning the Philomuse (as well as philhellenic) Society of Vienna, Sturdza and Capodistrias are reputed to have played the piano to each other during their more private moments…

Based on their extensive correspondence as well as on Sturdza’s diaries, the composer renders their moving story in non-narrative terms and sensitively “stages” a compassionate immersion in the shared interiority of two people who lived separately – but are brought together retroactively on stage, thanks to the empathetic power of a music full of sensuality and repressed passion.

Ticket prices: 15€, 20€ • Students: 10€

 

Music theatre • Commissioned by the GNO Alternative Stage
Kolokotronis Contemplating the Future 
Women Preparing for the Revolution
and I’ll Be Thinking of Something
9, 10, 14, 15, 16 October 2021 • Performances start at 18.30 (Sunday 19.00)
GNO Alternative Stage – SNFCC
As part of the tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution
Stage directors: Michail Marmarinos, Akillas Karazisis • Dramaturgs: Akillas Karazisis, Michail Marmarinos • Music: Antonis Anissegos • Set designer Kenny MacLellan • Costume designer Kathrin Krumbein • Lighting designer: Alekos Anastasiou • Cast: Lambros Grammatikos, Akillas Karazisis, Evangelia Karakatsani, Ektoras Lygizos, Electra Nikolouzou, Marios Sarantidis, Maria Skoula • Guest: Michail Marmarinos • Also featuring Mary Karazisi • Antonis Anissegos (piano, electronics)

This production, part of a tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org].

Via the means of a theatrical language where stage and sonic elements are intertwined in unpredictable and novel ways, the bicentennial tribute production by Michail Marmarinos and Akillas Karazisis sets out to approach the Greek War of Independence as a field of constant critique and self-critique, thus putting forth a dramatic treatment at once playful, poetic and historically informed.

In this production, Michail Marmarinos and Akillas Karazisis bear witness to faraway persons, events and locations in the present tense. Onstage, they collect “slices of life” coming from another time and represent them in the theatrical “now”. They emphasise successful and unsuccessful attempts of encountering the past and present onstage the discoveries of their “excavations”. They treat their material like sketches or unfinished canvasses that demand the intervention of live participants in order to be completed, commented upon or given meaning. The actors present onstage, with their voices, bodies and being, fill in the historical revelations with living colour, formulating their own version of the genealogy of the present. A stage production made out of thoughts and ideas, narrations and songs, poetry, dance and painting, faces and bodies, light and sound – out of what is enunciated and displayed.

Ticket prices: 15€, 20€ • Students: 10€

 

Performance • Commissioned by the GNO Alternative Stage
Synthesis
29, 30, 31 October 2021 • Starting times TBA
GNO Alternative Stage – SNFCC
As part of the tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution
Concept, planning, curators: Tzeni Argyriou, Vassilis Gerodimos • Creative and research team: Amalia Tsekoura, Argyro Chioti, Aristotelis Papakonstantinou, Armin Kerber, Christos Christopoulos, Christiana Galanopoulou, Coti K., Danae Bletsa, Dimitris Katsanis, Eleni Riga, Erato Tzavara, Ermis Malkotsis, Evi Saoulidou, Georgia Mavragani, Giorgos Zygouris, Kassie Kafetsi, Kitt Johnson, Konstantinos Papanikolaou, Konstantinos Zografos, Konstantinos Zves, Kostis Koronaios, Marina Papoulia, Maro Fasouli, Miguel Ángel Melgares, Minas Antypas, Nikos Papadimitriou, Polina Kremasta, Rania Mavriki, Sofia Mavragani, Stavroula Siamou, Tasos Palaioroutas, Thanasis Papanastasis, Theo Abazis, Fotis Siotas, Vasilis Sakkis, Virginia Mastrogiannaki • With the participation of the students of the GNO Professional Dance School

This production, part of a tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org].

Synthesis, a new performative installation by choreographer Tzeni Argyriou and visual artist Vassilis Gerodimos, tackles the complex event of the Greek War of Independence. Over 30 artists from the whole spectrum of performance and visual arts take part in the creation of the work, summoning the visitor to a unique experience.

Synthesis takes the form of a performative assemblage that correlates the process that produced the historical and socio-political network of the Greek War of Independence with that of the collective work, with its own particular, diverse conflicts, contradictions, aporias, transitions and reversals. During the three days of the event, each of whom conceptually corresponds to one of the three stages of the Greek Revolution (the intoxication of the initial outbreak, the middle-period introversion and the late-phase fatigue, but also the resilience which was a constant characteristic of the whole revolutionary decade), the artists cooperate in real time to create an interactive installation in which the spaces of the Alternative Stage lend themselves to a dynamic process of incessant visual and aural mobility. The creators set out to throw light on the invisible aspects of the official history by emphasising under-recognised factors such as financial management, military administration, ideological developments and everyday life in the revolutionary period.

Through the conversion of the Alternative Stage to a workshop space where the limits between “stage” and “backstage” become permeable and the public experience the preparation and final presentation of a series of concurrent and overlapping actions in active dialogue with each other, the creators of Synthesis trace the intertwined historical “lines” that synthesise the premeditated and the random, highlighting the analogies between a performative and a historical event.

Ticket price: 5€

 

Opera-ballet • Greek premiere
Bibilolo
Marc Monnet / Arno Fabre
5, 6, 7 November 2021 • Performances start at 20.30 (Sunday 11.00, 19.00)
GNO Alternative Stage – SNFCC
Music: Marc Monnet • Stage director – Object conception, construction & manipulation – Lighting designer: Arno Fabre • Object research, construction & manipulation: Éric Dubert, Latifa Leforestier • Video & lighting research, creation & interpretation: Frédéric Blin • Video research & creation: Joris Guibert • Computer programming: Thierry Coduys  • Laetitia Grisi (piano), Stéphanos Thomopoulos (piano), Julien Martineau (piano)

A co-production of the GNO Alternative Stage with Printemps des Arts de Monte-Carlo (Monaco) / GRAME – Centre national de création musicale (France) / Cerise Music

An “opera” without singers and a “ballet” without dancers – but with plastic animals, electric trains, remote-controlled bulldozers, exterminator robots, smoke machines, pulleys, electric motors, cables and cast long shadows, Arno Fabre’s irresistible phantasmagoria based on the musical work by Marc Monnet with the childlike and improbable title Bibilolo arrives at the GNO Alternative Stage to offer a seductively ludic, demystified introduction to the kaleidoscopic soundscape of contemporary music.

The composer Marc Monnet, who wrote the original version of Bibilolo based on a collection of more than 400 “old-fashioned” electronic sounds created with a Yamaha TG77 synthesizer from the ’90s, writes about his award-winning work: “I did this piece with great liberty; I really wanted to enjoy myself, to not forbid anything to myself”. It is a dense, inexhaustible and chimerical composition whose sounds evoke an overpopulated world of feverish, incessant activity where humour stands next to terror, like in a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.

For his part, the stage director Arno Fabre imagined a dreamlike and absurd set, a kind of huge child’s bedroom expedient to free-associative transformations, exhilarating as well as nightmarish; a space where, in his own words, “stuffed animals are being cut up, dolls made up and combed (when not tortured and dissected), fans play volleyball, Meccano toys are splendid birds and ‘Duracell’ bunnies reach the end of the world and jump collectively to their death, while still impassively beating their little snare drums”…

Ticket prices: 15€, 20€ • Students, children: 10€

 

Concert cycle • Commissioned by the GNO Alternative Stage
A Greek Songbook
19, 20, 21 November 2021 • Performances start at 20.30 (Sunday 19.30)
GNO Alternative Stage – SNFCC
As part of the tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution
Curator: Kornilios Selamsis • Creative team: Yannis Angelakas, Nicoleta Chatzopoulou, Foivos Delivorias, Martha Frintzila / Vassilis Mantzoukis, Nalyssa Green, K.Bhta, Dimitris Kamarotos / Amalia Moutoussi, Pavlos Katsivelis / MC Yinka, Apostolos Kitsos, Petros Klampanis, Lolek, Dimitri Papageorgiou, Michalis Paraskakis, Pavlos Pavlidis, Giorgos Poulios / Euripides Laskaridis, Blaine L. Reininger, Filippos Sakagian, Michalis Siganidis, Fotis Siotas / Thodoris Gonis, Nicolas Tzortzis, James Wiley, Savina Yannatou, Fanis Zachopoulos, Sofia Zafeiriou etc

This production, part of a tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org].

The GNO Alternative Stage presents a new, ambitious production, a songbook about the bicentenary of the Greek War of Independence curated by composer Kornilios Selamsis. Over 30 creators from the fields of contemporary classical and popular music, as well as the performance arts, unfold a series of bold musical constructions, songs and images, with the participation of 15 musicians.

Assembled in three concert programmes, the building blocks of the Songbook (themselves divided into three categories: songs, instrumental compositions and video art works) leverage a wide spectrum of creators from the fields of “art” and “popular” music, whose only common feature is the incompatibility (under normal circumstances) of their aesthetic and technical approaches. Without otherwise attempting to disguise its innate contradictions, the resultant material is being streamlined at the level of its sonic materialisation by the use of three instrumental quartets (“folk”, “classical” and “pop”), each with its own unique connotations, resulting in a confrontational configuration that endeavours to formally render the slew of heterogeneous streams commingled in the cultural and political crucible of 1821.

The project is founded on the common use by all participants of a body of curated historical material (texts, tunes or narrations) directly or indirectly related to persons and events of the Greek War of Independence – a fragmentary landscape of singing ruins, around which the descendants may build their contemporary superstructure.

 Ticket prices: 15€, 20€ • Students, children: 10€

 

Music theatre • World premiere / Commissioned by the GNO Alternative Stage
Cycle “Odes to Byron”
Shades in Hades
Alexandros Mouzas
27, 28 November 2021 • Performances start at 20.30 (Sunday 19.30)
GNO Alternative Stage – SNFCC
As part of the tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution
“Odes to Byron” cycle curator: Alexandros Mouzas
Conception – Music – Text selection: Alexandros Mouzas • Conductor: Nicolas Vassiliou • Stage director: Thomas Moschopoulos • Set designer: Evangelia Therianou • Costume designer: Magdalini Avgerinou • Lighting designer: Nikos Vlassopoulos • Choreographer: Alexis Fousekis • Featuring actor Christos Loulis and dancers Christos Strinopoulos, Despina Lagoudaki • With the participation of an 11-member instrumental ensemble

In collaboration with The Messolonghi Byron Society

This production, part of a tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org].

Eloquence, humour, empathy, biting irony and a slew of valuable biographical, historical and ethnographic information typify the almost 3,000 (!) letters of Lord Byron that have survived to this day, on the merits of which he is widely considered as one of the greatest letter-writers of the 19th century. From this unruly and inexhaustible body of texts, Alexandros Mouzas, composer and curator of the “Odes to Byron” cycle, chose the letters written during the poet’s final three months at Missolonghi, alongside excerpts from writings, thoughts and poems by Byron, as material for his new music theatre work.

Byron’s tireless attempts to unify the warring Greek factions, financially assist the Greek War of Independence, raise consciousness about the Greek cause abroad, offer humanitarian help to the war’s victims and take care of his personal affairs before being raised (through his untimely death) to the status of international symbol of the philhellenic movement, thus decisively arousing the interest of foreign powers in the Greek struggle, are represented in an innovative first-person monodrama combining a contemporary musical idiom with exhaustive historical research. Additionally, Thomas Moschopoulos’ stage direction eloquently renders the atmosphere of the poet’s final, daring adventure in Missolonghi – the glorious terminal station of a unique, and thoroughly Romantic, life story.

Ticket prices: 15€, 20€ • Students: 10€

 

Concert
Mikis Theodorakis Cycle
Asikiko Poulaki
Mikis Theodorakis
4, 5 December 2021 • Performances start at 20.30 (Sunday 19.30)
GNO Alternative Stage – SNFCC
As part of the tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution
Lyrics: Michalis Ganas • With Yannis Dionisiou and the participation of the Estudiantina of Nea Ionia (Music director Andreas Katsigiannis)

This production, part of a tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org].

Among the most interesting and unusual compositions in Mikis Theodorakis’ inexhaustible oeuvre, the song cycle with the peculiar title Asikiko Poulaki came into being thanks to the initiative and fertile collaboration of a group of artists (including the guitarist and arranger Yannis Spathas, the singer Vasilis Lekkas and the poet Michalis Ganas) to whom Theodorakis entrusted the first recording of the work, released in 1996.

The cycle Asikiko Poulaki is the climax of the long, though covert, experimentation of the then seventy-year-old Theodorakis with the melodic modes and asymmetrical rhythms of the tradition of Asia Minor. Additionally, it constitutes a belated and moving tribute to the composer’s mother, Aspasia Poulaki (whose last name, literally meaning “little bird”, can be found in the work’s title), as well as her ancestry (from Çeşme, Asia Minor). For its part, the term “Asikiko” (from the Turkish word aşık, meaning “lovelorn” as well as “traditional bard”, but whose meaning in Greek is “gallant”, “vigorous”) refers to a composite dance metre, invented by Theodorakis, in which groups of three and two beats (long or short) alternate progressively.

In a new approach to this singular work for the Alternative Stage, Yannis Dionisiou and the Estudiantina of Nea Ionia (a distinguished and internationally recognised traditional orchestra, dedicated to the creative continuity of the eclectic musical tradition of Smyrna) promise a modern and productive reconnection of Theodorakis’ inspiration to its traditional roots.

Ticket prices: 15€, 20€ • Students, children: 10€

 

Concert
Tribute to Anestis Logothetis
8 December 2021 • Performance starts at 20.30
GNO Alternative Stage – SNFCC
Christos Marantos (piano) • With the participation of Natascha Gangl & Rdeča Raketa (Maja Osojnik & Matija Schellander)

In collaboration with the Faculty of Music Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Anestis Logothetis’ work redefined the landscape of the post-war European musical avant-garde, synthesising in its unique way a series of concerns and preoccupations of that productive era: the border between determination and contingency in musical composition, the renegotiation of the roles of composer, performer and listener in the production process of the musical work, the limits of traditional methods of notating music and the new possibilities of sound creation afforded by the technologically novel domain of computer-assisted composition. His “graphical scores”, developed at the end of the 1950s, radically expanded the traditional framework of musical notation, in fertile dialogue with analogous innovations by composers such as Earle Brown, Sylvano Bussotti and John Cage. Additionally, they spurred the field of musical notation beyond the mere registration of performing instructions, opening it up to unexpected dimensions, such as conceptual symbolisation, free association and even purely aesthetic qualities – several of Logothetis’ scores ended up exhibited in galleries as autonomous objects. Furthermore, the purely acoustic dramaturgy he systematically cultivated in his numerous radio works broadened the concept of music theatre towards new, technologically informed directions.

The GNO Alternative Stage participates in the commemoration of the centenary of the composer’s birth in collaboration with the Faculty of Music Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, whose symposium in memory of this important pioneering figure of contemporary music forms the apex of the centenary celebrations. The concert’s programme charts the critical period of the composer’s transition from traditional methods of registering music to his novel graphical notation, culminating with his pioneering electroacoustic work.

Ticket prices: 15€, 20€ • Students, children: 10€

 

Concert
Rigas’ Flute
From absolutism to the Revolution
9 December 2021 • Performance starts at 20.30
GNO Alternative Stage – SNFCC
As part of the tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution

Dimitris Kountouras (transverse flute), Flora Papadopoulou (baroque harp)

This production, part of a tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org].

The life and work of Rigas Feraios, poet of the revolutionary anthem Thourios, martyr of the Greek national cause and precursor of the Greek War of Independence, are widely known. Less well known, however, are his interest in music and his talents as a flute player. The programme of this tribute concert (featuring the distinguished early music specialists Dimitris Kountouras and Flora Papadopoulou) contains compositions from the rich chamber music repertoire of the transitional period between the absolutist Ancien Régime and the paradigm shift brought on by the French Revolution. Works for flute and harpsichord by Italian, French, Austrian and Greek composers, including variations on the revolutionary songs La Marseillaise and La Carmagnole by Giuseppe Cambini, airs published in the aftermath of the Revolution in the journal Chronique de Paris and compositions written in Vienna during the time of Rigas’ revolutionary activity by composers such as Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and Michael Haydn.

Ticket prices: 15€, 20€ • Students, children: 10€

 

Music theatre for young audiences
Silence, the King Is Listening
Nikos Kypourgos
Matinées • Performances start at 11.00
12, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31 December 2021 & 2 January 2022
Evening shows • Performances start at 19.30
12, 19, 22, 23, 26 December 2021
GNO Alternative Stage – SNFCC
Libretto: Thomas Moschopoulos (in collaboration with the composer) • Transcription for chamber ensemble: Kharálampos Goyós • Stage director: Theo Abazis • Set & costume designer: Kenny MacLellan • Lighting designer: Nikos Sotiropoulos • Associate director: Eleana Tsichli • Cast: Haris Andrianos, Dimitris Nalbantis, Vassia Zacharopoulou • With the participation of a 5-member instrumental ensemble

Nikos Kypourgos’ and Thomas Moschopoulos’ “little musical”, a sparkling offshoot of the early, fertile period of the Athens Concert Hall that has since asserted itself as one of the most popular works of contemporary Greek music theatre, arrives at the GNO Alternative Stage to captivate the public with its humour, poetic vein and subversive spirit. The work is presented in a new, inventive staging by Theo Abazis –former deputy director of the National Theatre of Greece and well-known for a series of productions that inseparably fuse the musical and theatrical element– staffed with a resplendent cast of opera stars.

Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes and (improbably!) dedicated to the memory of the American pioneering composer John Cage, Silence, the King Is Listening is, at the same time, an ideal introduction of younger as well as (why not?) older spectators to the concepts, techniques and tools of musical composition, and also a hilarious, ruthless attack to all kinds of hypocritical snobbery that deaden musical creation and reception.

Deftly poised between operatic traditionalism and playful postmodernism, Silence, the King Is Listening tells the story of a music-loving, though intolerable king who is never satisfied, no matter what pieces of music his court musician plays. The musician is roused from his despair by the Muse, who seizes the opportunity to return to a job she had not practised since the glorious eras of Schubert, Mozart and Bach. She enlists the help of the seven notes of the musical scale, inspiring the musician to write a wonderful piece – which once again fails to satisfy the king! It’s time, therefore, for the imagination to give (as always!) a solution…

Ticket prices (matinées and Sundays): 12€, 15€
Students, children: 10€
Daily performances for schools: 10€

Production donor 

 

 

Music theatre • World premiere / Commissioned by the GNO Alternative Stage
Cycle “Odes to Byron”
The Air of Greece
George Tsontakis
17, 18 December 2021 • Performances start at 20.30
GNO Alternative Stage – SNFCC
As part of the tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution
“Odes to Byron” cycle curator: Alexandros Mouzas
Script: George Tsontakis, Elsa Andrianou • Conductor: George Tsontakis / Nikos Laaris • Dramaturg: Elsa Andrianou • Research: Nefeli Maistrali • Featuring actor Robin Beer • With the participation of a 6-member vocal and a 9-member instrumental ensemble
In collaboration with The Messolonghi Byron Society

This production, part of a tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org].

At the culmination of the Alternative Stage’s tribute to Lord Byron, we find the new music theatre piece by Greek-American composer George Tsontakis, an award-winning creator well-known for the rhetorical and communicative power of his music.

The work, commissioned by the GNO, aspires to nothing less than a reconstruction of the poet’s Greek adventure: Byron arrived at Missolonghi in January 1824 and died there three months later at the age of thirty-six, after an intense period of brave, though confused, involvement with the Greek War of Independence, of meditation on the onset of middle age and his awareness of the oncoming end, of visionary desire for heroic action as well as of impetuous passion for the sixteen-year-old warrior Lukas Chalandritsanos.

The composer sets the “scene” at Byron’s deathbed and undertakes to render the dying poet’s consciousness through a musical and textual synthesis of authentic historical documents and fragments from his poetical work. Sung by a vocal ensemble that combines the functions of English Madrigalists and Greek Chorus, the work juxtaposes the memory of the poet’s passionate and aristocratic youth to the chaotic war conditions he came up against in revolutionary Greece, thus highlighting the transcendent dimension of his ultimate, sublimely Romantic self-sacrifice on the altar of the ideal.

Ticket prices: 12€, 15€ • Students, children: 10€

 

Masterclass|
Workshop for young composers with George Tsontakis
20, 21, 22 December 2021 • Sessions start at 11.00
GNO Alternative Stage – SNFCC
As part of the tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution
With the participation of an instrumental ensemble

This production, part of a tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org].

Concurrently with the production of his new music theatre work The Air of Greece at the Alternative Stage, award-winning composer George Tsontakis will host a three-day composition workshop, addressed to composers until the age of 35.
Applicants may send the following material to the e-mail address This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. until Monday, 1 November:
- Two (2) representative works of theirs as pdf scores. Scores may be accompanied by sound files (midi renderings acceptable)
- One (1) or two (2) works or extracts of works to be read/rehearsed by a live instrumental ensemble during the masterclass. Works to be rehearsed must be written for one (1) up to five (5) musicians from the following configuration: flute, clarinet, horn, trumpet, percussion, harp, piano, violin, cello. The total duration of works to be rehearsed must not exceed six (6) minutes. It is understood that “representative” works and works “to be read” may be the same
- CV, including proof of birth date.
Composers whose works are selected for the workshop will be notified by the GNO Alternative Stage by the end of November.
For further enquiries, please send any questions to the address This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Free admission upon priority vouchers

 

Cycle “Odes to Byron”
Hebrew Melodies
Isaac Nathan / Lord Byron
Available for free streaming at nationalopera.gr/GNOTV/en from 12 October to 31 December 2021
As part of the tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution
“Odes to Byron” cycle curator: Alexandros Mouzas

 Lenia Safiropoulou (mezzo-soprano), Vassilis Kavayas (tenor), Apostolos Palios (piano)

 This production, part of a tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org].

 “The Greeks have as small a chance of redemption from the Turks as the Jews have from mankind in general”, wrote Lord Byron, whose genuine interest in what he called “the poetry of politics” –especially in issues concerning minorities and the liberation movements that marked the early Romantic period– is absolutely indisputable, as evidenced by his periodic, though passionate, involvements with matters such as the revolutionary movements of Italy, the political and cultural oppression of Armenia and, of course, his ultimate devotion to the cause of the Greek liberation.

Hebrew Melodies, a collection of old as well as newer Jewish tunes published in 1815 by Isaac Nathan –a popular English Jewish musician and generally colourful personality– with Byron’s lyrical contribution as commercial bait, struck a chord with the Romantic fashion for orientalism and the “ethnic” revival of local traditions, eventually becoming one of the poet’s most popular and widespread works, despite the inevitable anti-Semitic criticism. The popularity of the verses (subsequently set to music repeatedly by such figures as Mendelssohn, Schumann and Mussorgsky) did not help rescue Nathan’s original melodies from oblivion; those original compositions are now being revived by the Alternative Stage, with the contribution of some of the most notable Greek recitalists.

 

Concert • World premiere / Commissioned by the GNO Alternative Stage
Martha: A story from Missolonghi
Nikos Xydakis
Available for streaming at nationalopera.gr/GNOTV/en from 9 November to 31 December 2021
Ticket price: 5€ (Presale ticketservices.gr/en, GNO Box Office [+30 2130885700, daily 09.00-21.00])
As part of the tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution
Libretto: Dionysis Kapsalis • Video – Visual material: Vassilis Kehagias • Lighting designer: Christos Tziogkas • Cast: Irini Derebei, Tassis Christoyannis • With the participation of the female vocal group Pleiades and the POLIS Ensemble • Neoklis Neophytides (piano), Sofia Efklidou (cello)

This production, part of a tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org].

The figure of Martha, the beleaguered mother from the fragments of Dionysios Solomos’ epic, unfinished poem The Free Besieged, lies at the centre of this musico-poetic synthesis that ventures to render one of the most prominent episodes of the Greek War of Independence: the Third Siege and Exodus of Missolonghi in the spring of 1826 – seen, this time, from the viewpoint of the besieged women.

Based on two sources that balance the popular and the learned in creative ways (the invaluable Memoirs of the revolutionary warrior and historian Nikolaos Kasomoulis, to whom we owe a first-hand account of the siege, and the lacerating poetic transubstantiation of the historical events by the genius of Solomos, the national poet of Greece), this creative partnership of composer Nikos Xydakis, well-known for his skilful bridging of folk and oriental elements with Western-style songwriting, and award-winning poet Dionysis Kapsalis puts on stage the historical figures of the Poet (Solomos) and the Narrator (Kasomoulis) as carriers of their own words in an attempt to delineate the transcendent, ethical grandeur of the insurgent, self-sacrificing women of Missolonghi through an idiom that combines the means of poetry, music and narration in diverse ways.

Music theatre • World premiere / Commissioned by the GNO Alternative Stage
Cycle “The Revolution Through the Eyes of the Other”
Such A Beautiful and Just Case: Haiti / Greece / 1821
Available for free streaming at nationalopera.gr/GNOTV/en from 24 November to 31 December 2021
As part of the tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution
Original text – Intertext composition – Stage director: Konstantinos Chatzis • Literary dramaturg: Antigoni Karali • Original concept – Research – Stage dramaturg: Stella Papakonstantinou • Set designer: Artemis Flessa • Costume designer: Ioanna Tsami • Butoh training: Ioanna Garagouni • Lighting designer: Stella Kaltsou • Cast: Lydia Koniordou, Vasilis Milionis, Alexandros Psychramis, Mariam Rukhadze, Dimitris Tsiklis • Vocal ensemble arrangements – Musician on stage: Fotis Lamaris • Theodore Tzovanakis (piano)

 This production, part of a tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org]. 

The Haitian Revolution, the biggest slave uprising since the age of Spartacus and the only one to lead to the foundation of an independent state as early as 1804, remains one of the most influential pages of world history: it dealt a decisive blow to colonialism, effectively radicalised the ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution for enslaved populations and people of colour and made the leading figure of Toussaint Louverture into a global, timeless symbol of emancipation. In one of the most moving, though less well-known episodes of the Greek War of Revolution, Haiti became the first state to recognise the right of the Greek Revolution just a few months after its outbreak, through the correspondence of Haiti’s president Jean-Pierre Boyer with Greek scholar and activist Adamantios Korais – going as far as to send 25 tonnes of coffee and 120 Haitian volunteers for the support of the Greek struggle.

Based on this episode, the new play by Konstantinos Chatzis deals with the urgent issue of multiculturalism in tandem with universal notions such as solidarity, liberation and self-determination of persons and peoples, charting, at the same time, an experimental soundscape of osmosis between song and speech via the techniques of vocal improvisation.

The creation of the GNO TV is a new strand of programming of the Greek National Opera realised thanks to the support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] grant for the enhancement of the Greek National Opera’s artistic outreach.