Wednesday, 28 June 2023

New premieres on GNO TV

Opera: Falstaff – Giuseppe Verdi
Dance: Le Chant du rossignol – Marco Goecke / Igor Stravinsky
Recital: Fragments of Time
From 29 June 2023 on nationalopera.gr/GNOTV

GNO TV is enriching its content with three major new premieres – works of opera, dance, and a recital. From 29 June, a new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s final opera –Falstaff– conducted by Pier Giorgio Morandi and directed by Stephen Langridge, Marco Goecke’s celebrated choreography for Igor Stravinsky’s Le Chant du rossignol, and the recital Fragments of Time featuring the soloists Margarita Syngeniotou and Titos Gouvelis will all be available to stream on nationalopera.gr/GNOTV. GNO TV was launched and is run with the support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] to enhance the Greek National Opera’s artistic outreach.

Falstaff on GNO TV

An ambitious new production of the comic opera Falstaff –Giuseppe Verdi’s swan song based on the Shakespeare comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor– conducted by Pier Giorgio Morandi and directed by the acclaimed director, and Artistic Director of the UK’s renowned Glyndebourne Opera Festival, Stephen Langridge, is coming to GNO TV. Following the enormously well-received performances given in January and February 2023 inside the Stavros Niarchos Hall, this GNO production will be available to stream on nationalopera.gr/GNOTV from 29 June 2023.

Central to the action is the washed-up old knight Sir John Falstaff, whose romantic misadventures make him a laughingstock in the provincial society of his small town. In the end, after a series of tragicomic situations have unfolded, all the work’s characters sing the following refrain together: “All the world’s a jest… but whoever laughs last, laughs best.”

In the title role is the internationally celebrated Greek baritone Dimitri Platanias. Performing the lead roles are the acclaimed GNO soloists Tassis Christoyannis, Vassilis Kavayas, Nicholas Stefanou, Yannis Kalyvas, Yanni Yannissis, Cellia Costea, Marilena Striftobola, Anna Agathonos, and Chrysanthi Spitadi.

With the help of George Souglides on sets and costumes, Dan O’Neill on movement, and Peter Mumford on lighting, Stephen Langridge shifts the setting of Falstaff’s story to 1930s England, to a time dominated by the absurdity of a social hierarchy that bordered on feudalism. The GNO Orchestra is conducted by the internationally acclaimed Italian maestro Pier Giorgio Morandi, the GNO Chorus by Agathangelos Georgakatos, and the GNO Children’s Chorus by Konstantina Pitsiakou.

Tickets –costing 10 euros– for the GNO TV online screening of Falstaff are on sale now via www.ticketservices.gr & at the GNO Box Office (+30 2130885700, 9.00-21.00 daily).

Production sponsor ALPHA BANK

Lead Donor of the GNO & Production donor The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF)

Le Chant du rossignol on GNO TV

Igor Stravinsky’s singular ballet Le Chant du rossignol –choreographed by Marco Goecke and first presented by the Greek National Opera Ballet in April 2019 inside the Stavros Niarchos Hall as part of a triple bill titled From Russia With Love– is coming to nationalopera.gr/GNOTV from 29 June 2023.

Igor Stravinsky was a huge influence on the musical vanguard active in the early decades of the last century, and made decisive contributions to the development of 20th-century music. His own personal development passed through various phases and, if anything defines him, it is precisely this stylistic diversity.

On first contact with this work of ballet by Marco Goecke, those watching are left stunned: this leading choreographer launches an “attack” on audiences through movement – by means of unusual moves. This choreography for Le Chant du rossignol (The Song of the Nightingale) was created for the Leipzig Ballet in 2009 and reworked for the Stuttgart Ballet in 2015. When asked to capture the essence of his choreography in just a few words, Goecke came back with: “Tragoùdi, Èros, Thànatos” (Greek for “Song, Love, Death”). The award-winning German choreographer had this to say about Le Chant du rossignol: “The ingredients that comprise the piece in this instance are: a song, a bird, many birds, the night-time of my works, the night of theatre itself, fragility, emergence, and escape, nature that lives and dies, and the very notion of beauty. Perhaps this piece is up in the air! Since it is like a breath…”

In addition to creating the choreography, Goecke also designed the sets. With costumes by Michaela Springer and lighting by Udo Haberland.

The piano soloist here is the acclaimed Greek pianist Giorgos Konstantinou.

With the Dancers of the Greek National Opera Ballet: Anna Fragou, Margarita Kostoglou, Rina Shimada, Vangelis Bikos, Stelios Katopodis, Kristian Manev, Yannis Mitrakis, Elton Dimrochi, Thanassis Solomos.

Tickets –costing 5 euros– for the GNO TV online screening of Le Chant du rossignol are on sale now via www.ticketservices.gr & at the GNO Box Office (+30 2130885700, 9.00-21.00 daily).

Fragments of Time on GNO TV

Inside an old, abandoned PPC power station in Faliro, Athens –a place of remembrance, history, and silence lying outside time– two artists are reviving memories and emotions. Music and song enter into discourse to build bridges between devastation and the hope that follows in its wake. Fragments of Time is available to stream for free on nationalopera.gr/GNOTV from 29 June 2023.

Mezzo-soprano Margarita Syngeniotou and pianist Titos Gouvelis perform pieces by François Couperin, Yannis Constantinidis, Paul Dessau, Ottorino Respighi, James Joyce, Francis Poulenc, and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

The director Marilena Katranidou notes: “In moments when the world –both around us and inside us– is brought crashing down, a reckoning is inevitable. As is a great big: ‘Yes’ – an affirmation of life. Because amid the ruins –both literal and metaphorical– we always find the courage to be reborn, to define ourselves anew, to see the world from another perspective. In keeping ourselves from harm, we evolve.” The acclaimed mezzo-soprano Margarita Syngeniotou adds: “‘There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.’ Time is merciless and immense. No-one can escape the future.”

With cinematography by Yorgos Frentzos and costumes by Sophia Arvaniti.

Free to stream on nationalopera.gr/GNOTV from 29 June 2023

GNO TV at a glance

GNO TV is part of a new strand of Greek National Opera programming that aims to showcase the artistic output of Greece’s opera house right across the world, expanding the very notion of artistic outreach. While GNO TV was launched in the midst of the pandemic, this new service was not simply a response to the challenges brought on by Covid-19 – rather, it signals a digital transition, one taking the Greek National Opera forward into an era marked by different needs and new circumstances. GNO TV is a project made possible through the support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] to enhance the Greek National Opera’s artistic outreach.

GNO TV is home to a wide variety of offerings, ranging from opera and ballet performances staged inside the Stavros Niarchos Hall, to operetta, music theatre performances, and festivals presented on the Alternative Stage, as well as shows for all the family, past GNO productions, online festivals, and educational programmes.

GNO TV performances are streamed through the Akamai global content delivery network – an on-demand platform that gives audiences the chance to watch GNO productions in the comfort of their own homes, whenever they like and as many times as they like, for one full month starting from their first stream. GNO TV productions are filmed on the GNO’s various stages using a multi-camera set-up, are specially directed for the screen, and are broadcast subtitled in Greek and other languages (English, as well as French and/or German, where indicated).

Also available to stream on GNO TV:

Just added
• Cheap Smokes, Panayotis Kalantzopoulos / Renos Haralambidis
CHEAP SMOKES (nationalopera.gr)
• Plan B, Ermira Goro
PLAN B (nationalopera.gr)
• Point of No Return, Ioannis Mandafounis
POINT OF NO RETURN (nationalopera.gr)

Still on

• Otello, Giuseppe Verdi
OTELLO (nationalopera.gr)
• Anita Rachvelishvili at the Roman Agora
ANITA RACHVELISHVILI AT THE ROMAN AGORA (nationalopera.gr)
• Andrei: Requiem in Eight Scenes, Dimitra Trypani
ANDREI: Requiem in Eight Scenes (nationalopera.gr)
• Madama Butterfly, Giacomo Puccini
MADAMA BUTTERFLY (nationalopera.gr)
• The Magic Pillows, George Dousis / Eugene Trivizas
THE MAGIC PILLOWS (nationalopera.gr)
• Silence, the King Is Listening, Nikos Kypourgos
SILENCE, THE KING IS LISTENING (nationalopera.gr)