Community and Creation Days

The Alternative Stage welcomes Community and Creation Days by GNO Learning & Participation, curated by Eva Karterou.

The Alternative Stage welcomes Community and Creation Days by the GNO Learning & Participation Department, a diverse cycle of events aimed at all kinds of audiences. A series of music theatre and dance performances, concerts, interactive children’s productions, participatory events, and educational programme presentations invites audiences to engage in creation, participation and free expression for an entire month, highlighting the breadth and momentum of projects developed by the GNO Learning & Participation Department.

Centered on incorporating accessibility practices in line with the principles of relaxed performances for the 2026/27 season, the year-long programme emphasizes a commitment to art that is open, inclusive, and accessible to everyone. Standing out among the productions are Camille Saint-Saëns’ The Carnival of The Animals and a new performance featuring music by Fotis Siotas, as part of the award-winning intercultural educational programme, Co-OPERAtive. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) is the Lead Donor of the GNO Learning & Participation Department.

Three pocket operas, three unique musical experiences for children! From Madama Butterfly and Rigoletto to Orpheus, opera meets play, imagination, and participation, transporting beloved works of the lyric repertoire into a world full of music, exploration, and creativity.

Madama Butterfly | Pocket Opera
8, 9 May 2027
Starts at: 17.00 & 19.00
GNO VIP Lounge – SNFCC
Age group: 8 – 11 years
Ticket price: €10
Tickets on sale from: 2/4/27

Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is adapted into a pocket opera for children aged 8 to 12, offering a visual, musical and narrative journey to early 20th-century Nagasaki. The story of the young Cio-Cio-San and the encounter between two different worlds unfolds through Puccini’s music, operatic singing, narration and a handcrafted miniature paper world inspired by the Japanese arts of origami and kirigami. Paper models and figures, puppetry and live filming come together to create an original form of paper cinema, in which children watch a miniature world come to life before their eyes while simultaneously seeing it transformed into cinematic images on the big screen. Children are invited to enjoy a distinctive theatrical experience that brings them closer to the world of opera and encourages them to discover Puccini’s music through imagery, storytelling and the immersive experience of listening.

Adaptation, direction: Dimitra Pemousi • Music supervision: Anthi Damvouneli • Constructions: AFOU Group • Lighting: Konstantinos Kostopoulos • Animation: Ivi Nathanael-Anagnosti, Dimitra Pemousi • Performance: Despoina Panagiotou, soprano • Musical performance: Anthi Damvouneli, clarinet • Production coordination: Alexandra Liakopoulou

Rigoletto | Pocket Opera
14, 15, 16 May 2027
Starts at: 16.30, 17.30, 18.30
GNO VIP Lounge – SNFCC
Age group: 1-3 years (Adult accompaniment required)
Ticket price: €10 per child and chaperone
Tickets on sale from: 2/4/27

Specially designed for babies and toddlers aged 1 to 3, this performance is inspired by Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto and creates a multisensory world of sound, imagery and movement. Within this world, children and their accompanying adults actively participate, interact and express themselves freely. Taking the aria La donna è mobile as its starting point and drawing inspiration from the fascinating world of birds, concepts such as change and transformation become tangible experiences through moving images, shifting colours, natural soundscapes and live music based on arrangements of themes by Verdi.

The performance creates a space open to imagination, sensory exploration and play, offering a gentle invitation to a fun first encounter with the world of opera.

Concept / dramaturgy: Vassilis Tzavaras, Erato Tzavara, Miranda Vatikioti, Michalis Nivolianitis • Original music / Sound design / Musical performance: Vassilis Tzavaras (voice, electric guitar, mandola, harmonica, percussion, loops), Michalis Nivolianitis (percussion, tone drum, whistle, lute, vocals, tapes) • Video design: Erato Tzavara • Set design: Natalia Moschakou • Educational activities consultant: Maria Pavlopoulou (educator, education consultant) • Facilitation: Erato Tzavara (educator), Miranda Vatikioti (drama educator)

L’Orfeo | Pocket Opera
22, 23 May 2027
Starts at: 17.00 & 19.00
GNO VIP Lounge – SNFCC
Age group: 4 -7 years
Ticket price: €10
Tickets on sale from: 2/4/27

Claudio Monteverdi’s Orpheus is introduced to children through an open, participatory experience where music, theatre, visual arts and play come together, with each performance recreated anew together with the children. Taking the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as its starting point, children journey from the luminous world of Arcadia to the mysterious Underworld, discovering the story through music, voice, movement, rhythm and imagery.

Children become part of the unfolding story: they create rhythms using percussion instruments and their own bodies, use voice and movement to express emotions, draw, and actively interact with the performance space. Their own responses and choices influence the music and action, while projections, shadows and images inspired by works of art continuously transform the stage.

Direction: Margarita Amarantidi, Angeliki Bozou • Original music & arrangement, Music direction: Valy Ioannou • Live video projections: Angeliki Bozou • Performers: Margarita Amarantidi (actor), Maria Machou (singer), Ioanna Roussou (actor, acrobat) • Musical performance: Margarita Amarantidi, trumpet; Valy Ioannou, piano, loop station