GNO Learning & Participation: Programme 2022/23

The Learning & Participation Department of the Greek National Opera presents a renewed and challenging new programme for the 2022/23 season, including a multitude of artistic participatory learning projects for children, teenagers, schools, adults, persons with or without disability, persons aged 65 and over, socially vulnerable groups, amateurs and professional artists from Athens and the rest of Greece.

From October 2022 to June 2023, audiences of all age groups, regardless of their background, knowledge and skills level, will have the chance to participate in a variety of activities aiming at the development of artistic skills, through experiential learning methods, equal participation standards in the creative process, and interactive and collaborative approaches.

In keeping with the key values it has based its actions on over the previous years, the Learning and Participation Department of the Greek National Opera has created a programme that is even closer associated with this year’s repertoire of the GNO, while evolving its collaborations with a broad network of acclaimed artists/educators, further developing the conversation with audiences outside Athens, and attempting to intensify the dialogue between the art of opera and society at large.

1. A year after the catastrophic wildfires in Northern Evia, the GNO Learning and Participation Department travels to the island’s hurt wider region, and based on the villages of Limni and Aghia Anna, presents a year-long cycle of educational and artistic activities titled Melisma. The programme is centered on the relationship between man and natural environment and includes a series of workshops for all age groups dealing with all the forms of the art of opera. Starting from separate workshops and the study of the Northern Evia region, all participants will work together to mount their own music theatre performance. The performance will receive its premiere in summer 2023 in Northern Evia, and in September of that same year it will be presented at the Greek National Opera in the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC).
2. The creative music, dance, and movement workshops in penitentiaries, which first took place in 2017 across Greece, return this season with a year-long seminar and workshop cycle targeted at the female penitentiary of Eleonas in Thebes, the male wing of the Korydallos Penitentiary, and the Special Youth Detention Center in Avlonas.
3. This year, activities for schools are enriched with a new, innovative and multidimensional educational programme: Opera interactively into Schools for Secondary Education schools which is co-financed by Greece and the European Social Fund through the Operational Program “Human Resource Development, Education and Lifelong Learning”. This programme will travel across Greece – both live and digitally – featuring the new work of Kornilios Selamsis Offenbach’s La belle Hélène, to a libretto by Alexandra K*, directed by Yannis Kalavrianos, and with sets and costumes by Petros Touloudis. The cycle of educational programmes for Primary Education schools, 3d Bell Opera, continues for a third consecutive year and this season it will present the work Drop…I / Ocean…TOGETHER by composer Alexandros Mouzas.
4. A new series of workshops is added to the activities for the whole family, titled Metamorphoses, conceived and curated by the Music Theatre Company Rafi. Through original artistic experiential activities, the project will reintroduce to audiences seven selected works that will be presented this year by the Greek National Opera: Don Giovanni, Don Quijote, Les contes d’ Hoffmann, Falstaff, Médée, Werther and Madama Butterfly. At the same time, the workshop for infants and preschoolers Opera From The Cradle comes back, while the much-loved dance workshop Dad, Shall We Dance? returns renewed and with a longer duration. The activity The Magic Pillows / Sleepover will offer children once again the singular experience of sleeping over at the GNO, on the occasion of Eugene Trivizas’ performance of the same title. Furthermore, the experiential filmmaking workshop, Opera Filmmakers,  also continues this year, in collaboration with the Olympia International Film Festival for Children & Young People.
5. Activities for adults focus on two new great GNO productions, Verdi’s Falstaff and Cherubini’s Médée. On the occasion of these two masterpieces, author and associate editor of the magazine “Opera Now”, Elena Mattheopoulou, will guide us, in two afternoons, through Verdi’s Shakespearean world and also across the Greek element that runs through the operatic repertoire.
6. The cycle of activities promoting accessibility, All Together At The Opera, continues for a second year. For the new season, it includes a series of educational workshops for deaf and hard of hearing teenagers and young adults titled Sound Art and the Experience of Deafness: Hearing as a Physical Experience, as well as the presentation of two selected fully accessible performances in the Stavros Niarchos Hall.
7. Activities for persons aged 65 and over continue this year with the popular workshop Guitar Express. Moreover, this season will also include the new experiential and intergenerational educational programme for adults 65+ and children aged between 5 and 7 years, which will be based on singing and music, oral speech, and personal stories.
8. Intercultural education continues this year with Co-OPERAtive, the first intercultural opera hub for youth in Europe. The programme, which received the 2019 Fedora Prize for Education, comes back with the goal of bringing out the power of music, uniting cultures, and presenting a fully-fledged performance in Spring 2023. This year the Co-OPERAtive team grows bigger with the Alumni Group, a new institution that will give those who completed their participation in the educational programme and wish it so, the opportunity to further delve into the art of opera by getting acquainted with all theatre-related professions, as well as a series of privileges, including free attendance of performances and participation in the creative process of Co-OPERAtive’s upcoming production.
9. The Intercultural Orchestra, Choir and Dance ensembles continue their journey through world music, enrich their repertoire with new material, and establish new interesting collaborations. This year, the Intercultural Orchestra expands even more by creating a hub for a mixed group of young musicians, aged 16 to 25 years, from different countries of origin and with different musical backgrounds.

GNO Learning and Participation major donor