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OPERA Gioachino Rossini Cinderella Conductors George Petrou – Constantinos Diminakis Director Rodoula Gaitanou Sets - Lighting Simon Corder Costumes Alexia Theodoraki Choir conductor Agathangelos Georgakatos Olympia Theatre 25, 26, 30 October 2013 1, 2, 3, 10, 13 November 2013 Performances begin at 20.00 One of Rossini’s most delightful comic operas, Cinderella is, of course, based on the famous tale by Charles Perrault, but this time with a few major differences that relate to the period in which the piece was written. For example, it was inconceivable at the time for the leading lady to display her legs on stage, so there is no little glass slipper in the opera. Instead, the prince found his beloved thanks to a bracelet. The new production, which kicks off the season for the GNO this year, also presents a few variations of its own. The action is set in the 20th century in a place and time that correspond with the narrative but include references that are more familiar to a contemporary audience. The production’s young director, Rodoula Gaitanou, will be making her debut at the Greek National Opera, though her resumé includes important collaborations with the Royal Opera House in London and other significant British opera companies. The main roles are performed by: Mary-Ellen Nesi, Irene Karayianni, Artemis Bogri, Antonis Koroneos, Vassilis Kavagias, David Menendez, Haris Andrianos, Carlos Esquivel and Dimitris Kasioumis With the participation of the GNO Orchestra and Choir OPERA Giuseppe Verdi Rigoletto Conductor Lucas Karytinos Director, Sets, Costumes Nikos S. Petropoulos Choirmaster Agathangelos Georgakatos Athens Concert Hall – Alexandra Trianti Hall 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15 December 2013 Performances begin at 20.00 One of Verdi’s most popular operas, Rigoletto returns to the GNO in the successful production of director Nikos S. Petropoulos, who has also designed the sets and costumes. He transports the action from 16th century Mantua to Mussolini’s Italy just before the outbreak of the Second World War. The decadent environment of the wanton Duke of Mantua is a perfect match for this age of conspiracy and arrogance. Verdi’s intensely dramatic music ties into the atmosphere of a time when everyone and everything exists in the shadows. The main roles are performed by: Carlos Almaguer, Nelson Martinez, Mario Zaffiri, Yiannis Christopoulos, Vassiliki Karayianni, Maria Mitsopoulou and Christina Poulitsi With the participation of the GNO Orchestra and Choir 1 OPERA Giuseppe Verdi Macbeth Conductor Myron Michailidis Director Lorenzo Mariani Athens Concert Hall – Alexandra Trianti Hall 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26 January 2014 Performances begin at 20.00 One of Verdi’s most thrilling operas, Macbeth is the GNO’s first production for 2014 and will be staged at the Athens Concert Hall’s Alexandra Trianti Hall at the beginning of the New Year. Based on the play of the same title by William Shakespeare, the opera offers a rare insight into the psychology of the leading roles, General Macbeth and his wife, two ruthless characters prepared to go to extremes in order to take the throne of Scotland. The powerful and dramatic music evokes the intensity of the characters and the action. The opera will be presented together with the ballet that Verdi composed for the Paris staging of the piece. The direction is by the acclaimed opera director Lorenzo Mariani, who has worked on numerous major productions with leading opera companies in Europe and the United States. The main roles are performed by: Dimitris Tiliakos, Dimitris Platanias, Tasis Christoyiannopoulos, Dimitra Theodosiou and Tatiana Melnychenko With the participation of the GNO Orchestra and Choir OPERA Jules Massenet Werther Conductor Ilias Voudouris Director Spyros A. Evangelatos Sets – Costumes Yorgos Patsas Olympia Theatre 11, 12, 13, 26, 27, 30 April / 2, 3 May 2014 Performances begin at 20.00 One of the most popular operas of the French repertory, Werther by Jules Massenet returns to the Greek National Opera after 30 years. The opera was written about a century after the epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther, on which it is based. Massenet masterfully evokes the poetic nature of the idealist Werther and of Charlotte, a young woman trapped by social convention. Like Goethe’s Faust (which gained widespread recognition mainly after Gounod’s adaptation for the opera), Werther captured the hearts and minds of the public after being set to music by the French composer. Massenet’s opera was hugely successful; it was translated into numerous languages and had a widespread impact, influencing everything from the ethos to the fashions of the time. The operatic version of Werther follows its own rules, with essential departures from the original text. While maintaining the theme of challenging prevalent conventions, it puts aside Goethe’s philosophical quandaries. The story of the star-crossed lovers described by Goethe inspired the French composer to pen a score of great lyricism and rare tenderness, with grand dramatic outbursts. The production is directed by acclaimed theatre director and President of the Athens Academy Spyros A. Evangelatos. 2 OPERA AT THE HEROD ATTICUS THEATRE Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Don Giovanni Conductor Lucas Karytinos Director Yiannis Houvardas Herod Atticus Theatre Dates to be announced For its first production in the summer of 2014 at the open-air Herod Atticus Theatre, the GNO has selected one of the greatest masterpieces of Western culture, Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Through his music, Mozart evokes all of the phases experienced by a man who challenges God and takes his fate into his own hands. Nothing is as it seems in this emblematic piece, which heralded the advent of musical Romanticism in the most poignant way. The production is directed by Yiannis Houvardas, an acclaimed Greek director and until recently director of the Greek National Theatre. Houvardas has had extensive experience in directing operas at leading houses in Europe, such as at the operas of Gothenburg and Copenhagen. In Greece, this is the first time he is directing an opera and his first collaboration with the GNO. For an opera like Don Giovanni which was so innovative for its time, Yiannis Houvardas’s incisive approach is greatly anticipated at the Roman-era amphitheatre. OPERA AT THE HEROD ATTICUS THEATRE Giuseppe Verdi Otello Conductor Myron Michailidis Director Yiannis Kokkos Herod Atticus Theatre Dates to be announced The GNO’s second production at the Herod Atticus is an opera by Verdi and represents the second time that the Italian composer turned to a work by Shakespeare toward the end of his career. In the twilight of his creative course, Verdi chose to work on one drama and one comedy. The dramatic piece was the tragedy Othello. The heroic but gullible Moorish general of the Venetian army is duped by the envious and sly Iago into believing that his wife is being unfaithful and smothering her to death. Music that is at once powerful and impressively reserved evokes the tragedy of the tale. Following the success of his production of The Flying Dutchman, the acclaimed Greek opera director Yiannis Kokkos takes on the task of directing one of his own favourites, offering a reading that is entirely different to anything we have seen before. OPERETTA Johann Strauss II Die Fledermaus (The Bat) Conductor TBA Director Alexandros Efklidis Olympia Theatre 22, 23, 26, 28 February 2014 1, 5, 7, 8 March 2014 23, 24 April 2014 4, 7, 14, 18 May 2014 Performances begin at 20.00 Die Fledermaus, the most popular operetta penned by Johann Strauss II and the first to be staged by the Greek National Opera back in 1940, returns in a new production. A light-hearted piece with plenty of humour and plot twists, it is defined by the majestic music of royal Vienna. The GNO’s new 3 production will again be performed in Greek, but this time with a new translation of both the prose and the lyrics by Dimitris Dimopoulos. Alexandros Efklidis, who has produced several successful operetta revivals already, transports the action to the Athens bourgeoisie of the 1960s, where Strauss’ heroes meet with surprise guests at Prince Orlofsky’s wild party. BALLET Renato Zanella / Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky The Nutcracker Conductors Yorgos Vranos - TBA Choreography Renato Zanella Olympia Theatre 23, 24 November 2013 12, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 28, 29, 31 December 2013 3, 4, 5 January 2014 Performances begin at 20.00 In The Nutcracker, one of the world’s loveliest Christmas tales, there is an indistinct line between reality and dreams. Tchaikovsky’s legendary ballet is being restaged at the GNO, for a run of 15 performances, by Renato Zanella, whose impressive choreography is based on the original story by E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. In the ballet’s second act, Zanella further uses a part of the music from the Overture-Fantasia of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet. In the GNO Ballet’s production, which was staged for five sold-out performances in the 2012-13 season, the choreography focuses on the dream of Clara, presenting it as a dramatic transition into adulthood through love and fear. The distinguished German set and costume designer Christof Cremer has created dreamy sets and costumes for the production, evoking an atmosphere that lives up to the descriptions of the famous fairytale. With the GNO’s Orchestra, Principal Dancers, Soloists, Coryphees and Corps de Ballet BALLET Yannick Boquin / Frederic Chopin Chopin in Love Piano TBA Choreography Yannick Boquin Olympia Theatre Avant-Premiere Thursday 28 November 2013 10, 11, 16, 17 May 2014 Performances begin at 20.00 This poetic ballet by French choreographer Yannick Boquin is inspired by the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and uses pieces by Frederic Chopin for the piano as its score. Boquin tells the tale of the tragic love affair between Werther and Lotte through the enchanting and eminently romantic music of the Polish composer. Greek premiere of the production. With the GNO Ballet’s Principal Dancers, Coryphees and Corps de Ballet 4 BALLET Renato Zanella / Eleni Karaindrou Journey to Eternity Conductors Miltos Logiadis - TBA Choreography Renato Zanella Thessaloniki Concert Hall – 28 & 29 September 2013 at 21.00 Olympia Theatre 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9 February 2014 Performances begin at 20.00 The GNO’s extremely successful production, Journey to Eternity, which was first presented in the 2012-13 season, returns in a new version that features the addition of new themes by composer Eleni Karaindrou, for six performances at the Olympia Theatre in February 2014. Karaindrou’s poetic and highly resonant music, which formed the backdrop of numerous films by internationally acclaimed late director Theo Angelopoulos, are what inspired choreographer Renato Zanella to create this dance journey. Coupled with the costumes and sets designed by Katerina Angelopoulou, and the movement of the Greek National Opera Ballet’s dancers, it brings to the stage scenes, themes and symbols from Angelopoulos’s ecumenical films. With the GNO’s Orchestra, Principal Dancers, Soloists, Coryphees and Corps de Ballet BALLET Renato Zanella / Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Swan Lake Conductor Ilias Voudouris Choreography Renato Zanella Athens Concert Hall – Alexandra Trianti Hall 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23 March 2014 Performances begin at 20.00 After the success of the GNO’s production of Romeo and Juliet, which was staged for two consecutive seasons, Renato Zanella, artistic director of the GNO Ballet, choreographs exclusively for the company one of the world’s most romantic dance dramas, Swan Lake to music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The enchanting tale of Prince Siegfried, the Swan Queen Odette, the evil sorcerer Von Rothbart and his daughter Odile is told here from a completely new point of view. With the GNO’s Orchestra, Principal Dancers, Soloists, Coryphees and Corps de Ballet OPERA FOR CHILDREN Nikos Kypourgos Beware! The Prince is Messy Conductors Nikos Vassileiou – Yorgos Aravidis - TBA Director – Libretto Thomas Moschopoulos Sets Evangelia Therianou / Costumes Claire Bracewell Lighting Lefteris Pavlopoulos / Movement Xenia Themeli Olympia Theatre Premiere Saturday 9 November 2013 at 20.00 Matinees (begin 11.00): 10, 13, November 2013 / 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15 December 2013 12, 19, 21, 22, 24, 26 January 2014 / 2, 4, 5, 9, 23, 25, 26, 28 February 2014 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 27, 30 March 2014 Evening performances (begin 20.00): 9 & 16 November 2013, 1 December 2013, 23 January 2014, 27 February 2014, 28, 29 March 2014 5 Nikos Kypourgos’s comic opera, directed by Thomas Moschopoulos who also penned the libretto, is based on the fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen The Swineherd. The story is about a young prince who disguises himself as a swineherd in order to win the affections of a stuck-up princess. In Kypourgos’s version everything has been tweaked and nothing is as it first appears. Everything is topsy-turvy: Princes and princesses who are something of slobs, muddy little animals with many human characteristics, and adults who act like children in the process of growing up. Humour plays with emotion and tenderness with satire. Moschopoulos returns to the GNO two years after he presented his successful production of Puss in Boots, with the promise of a fun and exciting tale for children and adults with a kid’s heart. This is the first time that the GNO will be scheduling evening performances for an opera written especially for children, as we believe that it will be appreciated by children and adults alike. The leading roles are performed by: Nikos Stefanou, Charalambos Alexandropoulos, Yiannis Kavouras, Marianna Mansola, Maria Mavrommati and Vassia Zacharopoulou With the GNO’s Children’s Theatre Orchestra GNO CHILDREN’S CHOIR A Christmas Tale Olympia Theatre 21, 22, 24, 27, 28, 29, 31 December 2013, / 3, 4, 5 January 2014, Performances begin at 11.00 This is a celebratory concert-performance with the Greek National Opera’s Children’s Choir, directed by Mata Katsouli and featuring musical themes inspired by Christmas. The full cast and crew of the production will be announced shortly. 6