The 5th Season – Fat Tuesday

Alternative Stage Founding Donor

Major Sponsor of the Greek National Opera

With the support of the International Coproduction Fund (Internationaler Koproduktionsfonds) of the Goethe-Institut
A co-production with the Goethe-Institut (International Coproduction Fund)
Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion Berlin

The renowned 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.
Carnival is an invention for otherworldly contributions to discourse, a means of expressing oneself beyond conventional rhetoric, allowing today’s laughter in mask and costume to give way to tomorrow’s reflection. The focal point of Novoflot’s carnival research is a musicalized camp in which our various ensembles come together. These camps are real, highly political, and existential events. On one hand, they stand for camping; on the other, they represent an exaggerated perception of cultural products and political discussions. This project is Novoflot’s artistic mouthpiece in times of profound paralysis and speechlessness — and an opportunity, in the face of international crises, to develop a new music-theatrical discourse exploring new fields of utopia. “It is complicated to express oneself politically. Even more difficult is finding common ground. This is a first attempt!” 
For the Athens premiere, the Berlin opera company Novoflot returns to the Greek National Opera for the first time since 2022. Together with the ensemble Dissonart, a vocal and performance ensemble, soloists from the international jazz scene, and players from the Athenian scene, a hybrid music theatre work will emerge, blending contemporary music and jazz, Renaissance carnival music and band elements, political speeches, and world premieres by Antonis Anissegos (Greece) and Michael Wertmüller (Switzerland).