I Want to See the Pope!

Alternative Stage Founding Donor

Major Sponsor of the Greek National Opera

Everyone wants to see the Pope! After a successful run of sold-out performances, the legendary operetta I Want to See the Pope! by Theophrastos Sakellaridis is revived at the GNO Alternative Stage, conducted by Nicolas Vassiliou and directed by Natasha Triantafylli, featuring an outstanding cast of opera performers and musicians.
The operetta I Want to See the Pope! (1920), which generated strong reactions upon its initial release, fully explores Theophrastos Sakellaridis’ modern bourgeois themes. The composer also penned the libretto, which is a domestic adaptation of Maurice Hennequin’s farce Les joies du foyer (1894). The plot involves a newly married bourgeois couple whose relationship is disrupted during their honeymoon trip to Rome when the young wife expresses the desire to see the Pope up close!
The work’s style, language, characters, music, and rhythm reveal a captivating stage world where hypocrisy, exaggeration, exhibitionism, and the unquestioned idealization of certain social institutions are sharply satirized. The audience witnesses a wedding, the expectations of the newlyweds and their relatives, and a Pope who—although he never appears—remains the unseen protagonist of the show throughout its duration, serving as a reminder of the fact that confusion, mix-ups, and the pitfalls of established values are often inextricable parts of human desire.