A cycle of interdisciplinary music, speech, and animation workshops for Junior High School children  

In co-production with the Olympia International Film Festival for Children & Young People

Opera Filmmakers returns renewed for a third year. In the current season, the programme will take the form of an intensive cycle of interdisciplinary music, speech, and animation workshops focusing its creative energy on Pyrgos (Elis). During the workshops, local students will be creatively introduced into the world of opera and cinema and will try their hand at making their own mini opera performance, which they will then attempt to turn into a short film (video clip).

The programme will be conducted in two phases: the first will be realized in Pyrgos (Elis), on 3,4 and 5 November 2023, where the young opera filmmakers, guided by the workshop leaders Dimitra Trypani (music score) and Iro Bezou (script writing), will create a hybrid mini opera of short duration, based both on modern music and the thematic, musical and textual conventions of the genre.

In the second phase, on 24, 25 and 26 November, the young artists will visit the premises of the Greek National Opera in the Stavros Niarchos Cultural Center. There, they will record the mini opera, and through the director Alexandros Voulgaris’ eye, they will transform it into a short film. Moreover, during the filming, they will have the chance to wander across the impressive facilities of the Greek National Opera in the SNFCC, enter the Orchestra Rehearsal Hall and the costume and props departments, slip behind the scenes and find themselves next to professional singers.

Throughout the whole process, under the guidance of the programme managers, participants will explore the chosen subject matter and get familiarized with the language, expressive means and techniques of opera and cinema, as well as with the basic principles of composition, writing and filming a music theatre work, with the goal of creating their own original audiovisual material.

The short opera will be screened as part of the 25th Olympia International Film Festival for Children & Young People (2-9 December 2023).

Planning / Implementation: Dimitra Trypani, Iro-Eleni Bezou, Alexandros Voulgaris

Age groups: students of all three grades of Junior High School

Dates: 3, 4, 5 November (workshops in Pyrgos, Elis) and 24, 25, 26 November 2023 (sound recording, filming and editing the opera into a short film at the GNO facilities in the SNFCC)

In coproduction with

GNO Learning & Participation Lead Donor