Kassandra

Alternative Stage Founding Donor & Production Donor

Major Sponsor of the Greek National Opera

The production was made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] to enhance the Greek National Opera’s artistic outreach.

The provocative contemporary chamber opera Kassandra created by distinguished Argentinian composer Pablo Ortiz, and featuring a libretto by renowned Uruguayan dramaturg Sergio Blanco, will be revived at the GNO Alternative Stage after a highly successful series of performances in Buenos Aires, Athens, and Thessaloniki. The operatic Kassandra found its ideal embodiment in the face of Brazilian transgender soprano  María Castillo de Lima, a performer with an exceptionally wide vocal range.

The GNO Alternative Stage and the Centro de Experimentación of the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires commissioned Pablo Ortiz to adapt Sergio Blanco’s monologue Kassandra into an opera. The main character, Kassandra, who is destined to wander at night on the outskirts of a nameless city in search of clients, blends the terrible with the sublime, the profane with the sacred, and the contemporary with the ancient, connecting the myth to the present through the music.

The stage direction is credited to Diana Theocharidis, a Greek individual who currently resides and works in Buenos Aires, and Alexandros Efklidis. The two directors have created a performance about the modern challenges of identity and acceptance, telling the story of a woman who possesses the gift of prophecy but is condemned not to be believed by anyone. “Kassandra, the cursed priestess of ancient Greek mythology, possesses the gift of foreseeing the future. However, like all the oracles of the ancient Greek world, she also sees the past; the oracle’s insight encompasses both the present and the absent. Given the gift of prophecy, Kassandra was cursed by the god Apollo so that no one would believe her words. Inside her, there is inherent both the tragic fate of humanity and that of the stranger, the refugee and the socially and gender marginalized. She sings and speaks in broken English, the English of someone who hardly knows the language yet is driven by the desire to be understood”, note the directors.