Opera
The GNO Alternative Stage Presents Works by Jani Christou
Alternative Stage
Jani Christou (1926-1970) was one of the most important personalities of the international avant-garde music. By combining improvisation, stage action and philosophical reflection, Christou pursued the traces of the avant-garde creating, thus, a particularly idiosyncratic and beguiling musical universe. In its first production, the newly-founded GNO Alternative Stage collaborates with the distinguished ensemble of contemporary music, dissonArt, and with the Athens Youth Symphony Orchestra and mounts two crucial works taken from the corpus of Jani Christou. Strychnine Lady (1967) is based on the composer’s recollection of dreams and upon Carl Young’s psychoanalysis, the two of them making up a stage entity in which actors and musicians involve the audience into an enthralling, and at the same time inscrutable, co-creation. Anaparastasis III (The Pianist) (1968) is also a work of the composer’s late period and one of the most popular of his entire oeuvre. The figure of the pianist, interpreted alternately by Aris Servetalis and Lenio Liatsou, becomes the “tool” through which the composer explores the mystic and dreamy rituals of artistic meta-praxis. The art installation accompanying the works is created by Alexandros Psychoulis and the production is directed by Alexandros Efklidis.
«We are very happy to have reached the point at which we breathe life into the ambitious project of a second stage for the Greek National Opera, the Alternative Stage, which will be hosted at the wonderful new facilities of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center. A few months before the official operation of the National Opera in SNFCC, the performances of Jani Christou’s works at the Alternative Stage, gives a very clear signal to all that will follow and which will be announced soon».
Myron Michailidis
Artistic Director of the GNO
«The particular works of Jani Christou, his overall personality and his work represent for the whole team of the Alternative Stage of the GNO an ideal to which we would like to tend this new artistic body that is added to the GNO. The dialogue between the arts, the spirituality of these particular works as well their ingenuous experimental character, are elements which we hope will recur in the following productions of Alternative Stage of the GNO».
Giorgos Koumendakis
Head of Artistic Programming
of the Alternative Stage of the GNO
The concert will take place within the framework of “Metamorphosis: The SNFCC to the World”, a four-day avant-garde cultural programme at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC) hosting artists and programmes from all over the world and with free entrance for the audience.
With the participation of the dissonArt ensemble of contemporary music and the Athens Youth Symphony Orchestra (AYSO)
Creative team
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Vladimiros Symeonidis Conductor -
Alexandros Psychoulis Art installation
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George Tellos Lighting
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Pavlos Sergiou Conductor (AYSO)
Cast
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Aris Servetalis, Lenio Liatsou (alternately) The Pianist (Anaparastasis III)
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Thodore Patsalidis, Greta Papa dissonArt Ensemble - Violin
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Hara Sira dissonArt Ensemble - Viola
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Vassilis Saitis dissonArt Ensemble - Cello
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Yannis Chatzis dissonArt Ensemble - Double bass
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Yannis Anisegos dissonArt Ensemble - Flute
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Alexis Stavridis dissonArt Ensemble - Clarinet
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Lenio Liatsou dissonArt Ensemble - Piano
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Greta Papa Strychnine Lady - Viola
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Kostas Koutsolelos, Aris Balis, Alexis Zervanos, Konstantinos Gavalas Strychnine Lady - Actors
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Spyros Poulimenos, Haris Tsikleas, Yannis Panagiotou, Alexandros Sofronis, Spyros Zardas-Tsenoglou, Elissavet Boura, Myrsini Dimopoulou, Romanos Lioutas, Christos Kyriakopoulos, Nikos Panas, Nikos Filippopoulos, Eleni Papadopoulou, Yorgos Synodinos, Andreas Kerkezos, Yorgos Chliavoras, Panayiota Kalavrizioti, Irini Kattavenaki, Yannis Mavritsakis, Dimitris Karagiouloglou, Platon Bourgiotis, Konstantina Kouveli, Varvara Tsotra, Myrto Xirouhaki, Mihalis Kontos, Kostas Hinis, Nikos Vlahos Athens Youth Symphony Orchestra (AYSO) musicians
Με την Ορχήστρα, τη Χορωδία και την Παιδική Χορωδία της ΕΛΣ, στο πλαίσιο της εκπαιδευτικής της αποστολής
Access
Instructions for your visitStavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center
364 Syggrou Ave., 17674 Kallithea
E.: info@snfcc.org
T.: (+30) 216 8091000
