With the support of the International Coproduction Fund (Internationaler Koproduktionsfonds) of the Goethe-Institut
Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion Berlin, Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council and GVL Foundation

The internationally acclaimed Berlin-based independent performing arts company Novoflot returns to the GNO Alternative Stage with its new production, The 5th Season – Fat Tuesday, a music-theatre interpretation of international carnival cultures. The 5th Season – Fat Tuesday, directed and conceived by Sven Holm, with music by Antonis Anissegos, Michael Wertmüller, Antonio Vivaldi, and other composers, and conducted by Vicente Larrañaga, will be presented for two unique performances on 16 and 17 May 2026. The work is a co-production with Novolfot.

Carnival is an invention for “otherworldly” contributions to the public discourse, a means of expressing oneself beyond conventional rhetoric, allowing today’s laughter to transform into a reflection on tomorrow through masks and costumes.

This work is Novoflot’s artistic “mouthpiece” in times of profound paralysis and inability to express oneself, as well as an opportunity, in the face of international crises, to develop a new musicotheatrical discourse that explores new fields of utopia. “It is complicated to express oneself politically. Even more difficult is finding common ground. This is a first attempt!”

Drawing on the traditions of the legendary Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, Novoflot’s Fat Tuesday in Athens – the third part of the cycle The 5th Season, carried out in collaboration with a series of major organizations across Europe – becomes the starting point and meeting ground for the formation of numerous exceptionally musical “magical communities,” whose unusual and dazzling performances herald the carnival of the future.

Together with the Dissonart ensemble from Thessaloniki, a diverse company of vocalists and performers; soloists from the international jazz scene; and musicians from the Athenian scene, specializing in contemporary music, a hybrid music-theater work will emerge. This new work, with more than 100 participants, will combine excerpts from Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, jazz, Renaissance carnival music, band music, political speeches, and the first performances of contemporary works by Antonis Anissegos (Greece) and Michael Wertmüller (Switzerland).

The concert will feature the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Municipality of Chalandri, first- and second-year students of the Athens Conservatoire Professional Dance School, the Palaio Faliro Municipality’s Friendship Club Choir (for senior citizens), and the GNO Children’s Chorus, as part of its educational mission.

A few words about the Novoflot company
The Novoflot company was founded in 2002 by director Sven Holm, conductor Vicente Larrañaga, and performance artist and dramaturge Sebastian Bark. Since then, it has created more than 50 experimental opera productions, also drawing on the expertise of dramaturge Malte Ubenauf and head of production Dörte Wolter.

The Novoflot company has performed at numerous theatres and festivals in Berlin, including the transmediale festival, the Radialsystem Berlin cultural center, Sophiensæle, the Hamburger Bahnhof museum, the Haus der Berliner Festspiele theatre, the Akademie der Künste, the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz theatre, and Statistik Berlin. They have also reached a broader audience through performances at the Hamburg State Opera, the German National Theatre in Weimar, the Ultraschall festival, and the Köln Philharmonie hall.

The company earned international acclaim at venues including the Warsaw Autumn Festival/Grand Warsaw, the National Theatre of Luxembourg, the Trafó Arts Center in Budapest, the Gare du Nord Hall in Basel, the Schauspielhaus in Zurich, Matucana100 Arts Center in Santiago, Chile, the Valparaiso Cultural Park, and the Copenhagen Opera Festival. In recognition of their “high level of impact both in Germany and internationally,” the Novoflot received the George Tabori Award from the Performing Arts Fund in 2014. In 2018, the book Novoflot – Die 15.Spielzeit was published by Theater der Zeit.

During their first visit to Greece in October 2022, Novoflot presented their groundbreaking work The Opera #2 – On the Ropes (About the End) ,at the GNO Alternative Stage, as well as their allegorical performance that combines sports and opera, The Opera #3 – The Outtakes, at the Great Lawn of the Stavros Niarchos Park within the SNFCC.