The Greek National Opera participates in the 60th Dimitria Festival in Thessaloniki with five major productions

Isadora Duck
I Want to See the Pope!
Golden Age
L’Amour à trois / La Voix humaine
Madre Salonico

For a second consecutive year, the Greek National Opera is travelling to Thessaloniki to participate in the 60th Dimitria Festival – the city’s most historic cultural event – with remarkably successful productions. As part of the GNO’s programme agreement with the Ministry of Culture and other Thessaloniki institutions, five opera, dance, music theatre, and musical productions will be presented there in October 2025, offering a diverse and high-quality artistic programme for all ages.

During this year’s 60^th Dimitria Festival, the GNO Ballet will present the successful production Golden Age by Konstantinos Rigos at the Theatre of the Society for Macedonian Studies of the NTNG (10, 11, 12 October).  Furthermore, three more productions from the GNO Alternative Stage will be performed: the musical for the whole family, Isadora Duck, written and directed by Stella Michailidou and with music composed by Kostas Vomvolos (Thessaloniki Concert Hall, Friends of Music Hall (M1), 4,5 October); Theophrastos Sakellaridis’ legendary opera I want to See the Pope!, conducted by Nicolas Vassiliou and directed by Natasha Triantafylli (Theatre of the Society for Macedonian Studies of the NTNG, 4,5 October); and the music theatre performance Madre Salonico, written by Leon A. Nar and directed by Victor Arditti (Thessaloniki Concert Hall, Emilios Riadis Hall (M2), 30, 31 October). Additionally, the GNO will present the opera double bill L’Amour à trois / La Voix humaine by Gian Carlo Menotti and Francis Poulenc, directed by Angela-Kleopatra Saroglou – a co-production between the GNO and the Thessaloniki Concert Hall (22, 24 October).

More specifically, the GNO productions scheduled to be presented during the 60^th Dimitria Festival are the following:

Musical for the whole family • New production
Stella Michailidou / Kostas Vomvolos
Isadora Duck
4, 5 October 2025 • Starts at: 19.00 (4/10), 11.30 (5/10)
Thessaloniki Concert Hall, Friends of Music Hall (Μ1)
Production: Greek National Opera Alternative Stage
Text, stage direction:  Stella Michailidou
Music:  Kostas Vomvolos
Set & costume designer:  Kenny McLellan
Choreographer:  Fotis Diamantopoulos
Lighting designer:  Christos Tziogas
Video designer:  Babis Venetopoulos
Music coach: Christos Sakellaridis

Isadora Lydia Stefou • Teacher – Narrator, Ms Hoity-Toity, Ms Papov Margarita Syngeniotou • Mr Coup-de-Pied Dimitris Nalbandis • Student, Swan, Papitsa Io Latousaki • Student, Swan, Pipitsa Georgia Kyriazi • Student, Swan, Young duck Rafaela Tsobanoudi • Student, Swan, Fox Iliana Yfantí • Student, Swan, Hunter, Colourful bird of the lake Myrsini Petroutsou • Students, Swans, Colourful birds of the lake Iwanna Loupeti • Anna-Maria Markopoulou, Eleni Fotou • Frog, Wolf Christos Ntentis (Onel) • Couple of invited dancers from the Swan Lake Igor Siadzko / Popi Sakellaropoulou  
(Dancers of the GNO Ballet)
Featuring the musicians: Odysseas Siozopoulos (clarinet), Sofia Efklidou (cello), Christos Sakellaridis (piano)

Following its great success during its initial run at the GNO Alternative Stage, the musical for the whole family, Isadora Duck, written and directed by Stella Michailidou and with music composed by Kostas Vomvolos, transforms the Thessaloniki Concert Hall into a peculiar “Swan Lake”, where a petite duck is trying to carve out her own path in dance. The production offers both an ideal and entertaining introduction to the art of dance for children and grown-ups.

The performance references a pioneering figure in modern dance, the “barefoot dancer” Isadora Duncan, along with classical fairy tales, such as Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling. Its heroine, the petite duck Isadora Duck, with her uniquely beautiful blue feathers, lives in Swan Lake, struggling to make her dream of becoming a ballerina come true. Passion and the desire to dance are at the heart of this performance, which communicates important values in a simple yet effective manner, offering audiences a tender and at once cruel self-awareness adventure through music, dance, and humour.

Ticket prices:
15€ (12€*), 12€ (10€*), 10€ (8€*)
* reduced
Book your tickets here

Operetta
Theophrastos Sakellaridis
I Want to See the Pope!
4, 5 October 2025 • Starts at: 20.30
Theatre of the Society for Macedonian Studies - NTNG
Production: Greek National Opera Alternative Stage
Score restored and adapted for chamber ensemble by Yannis Belonis
Conductor: Nicolas Vassiliou
Director: Natasha Triantafylli
Dramaturgy, adaptation: Elena Triantafyllopoulou
Set, costumes: Tina Tzoka
Movement: Dimitra Mitropoulou
Lighting design: Christos Tziogkas
Varonas: Dimitris Sigalos • Mr Latroudis: Vangelis Maniatis • Mrs Latroudi: Julia Souglakou • Αnna: Chrissa Maliamani • Adrianos: Nicolas Maraziotis • Rita: Marissia Papalexiou • Dimosthenis: Antonis Kyriakakis • Sergeant Nicolas Vassiliou
Featuring the Thessaloniki City Symphony Orchestra

The legendary operetta I Want to See the Pope! by the renowned composer Theophrastos Sakellaridis, a highly successful production of the GNO Alternative Stage, is travelling to Thessaloniki to take part in the 60^th Dimitria Festival. Directed by Natasha Triantafylli, the work will be presented in two unique performances at the Theatre of the Society for Macedonian Studies on 4 and 5 October 2025. The Thessaloniki City Symphony Orchestra will be conducted by Nicolas Vassiliou.

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 features 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.  

Ticket prices:
Stalls: 20€, 17€ (students)
Boxes: 15€, 12€ (students)
Balcony: 10€, 8€ (students)
Book your tickets here

GNO Ballet|
Konstantinos Rigos
Golden Age
10, 11 & 12 October 2025 • Starts at: 2100
Theatre of the Society for Macedonian Studies of the NTNG
Co-production between the Greek National Opera and the Belgrade Dance Festival  

Concept, choreography, set, track selection: Konstantinos Rigos
Music: Ted Regklis
Dramaturgy: Erie Kyrgia
Art installation: Petros Touloudis
Costumes: Daglara
Lighting: Christos Tziogkas
Video: Vasilis Kehagias

Dancers
Vangelis Bikos
Manex Alberdi, Yannis Gantsios, Stavros Ikbal, Elena Kekkou, Yannis Mitrakis, Elton Dimrochi, Petros Nikolidis, Marita Nikolitsa, Daniele Pecorari, Stefano Pietragalla, Marta Rivero de Miranda, Yorgos Hatzopoulos, Despina Chrysostomou

The GNO Ballet is visiting Thessaloniki to present the highly successful production Golden Age, created by Konstantinos Rigos, at the Theatre of the Society for Macedonian Studies of the National Theatre of Northern Greece on 10, 11, and 12 October, as part of the 60^th Dimitria Festival.

Golden Age is a co-production between the GNO and the Belgrade Dance Festival, where it received its world premiere. This co-production is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] to enhance the Greek National Opera’s artistic outreach.

Golden Age is an explosive performance about the present and future of dance, while also serving as a reflection of a mixtape of Rigos’ 35-year-long career, where the concepts of irony and nostalgia seem to be identical. From his time at the National School of Dance (KSOT), the spring of Greek dance in the 1990s, and the Dance Theatre Company OKTANA, to his work at the Art Theatre, the National Theatre of Northern Greece, the National Theatre of Greece, the Athens Festival, and the Greek National Opera, Konstantinos Rigos’ iconoclastic imprint transcends the boundaries of dance and converses with the art forms surrounding it. His artistic identity remains restless, subversive, provocative, sharp-edged, and brimming with emotions.

With Golden Age, Konstantinos Rigos introduces dance theatre vocabulary into the Greek National Opera Ballet, creating a new piece about the future of dance, through a striking blend of highlights that have marked his 35-year-long journey, while also incorporating new materials and present-day influences. Highlights featuring old materials viewed through a modern lens, moments that tell of times gone by, and their projection onto the future. Through golden reflections, vertical screens, mottos, and a grand chandelier created by visual artist Petros Touloudis, the dance performance Golden Age signs the declaration of a new faith that places its beliefs not in God but in humans, not “in the heavens” but “on earth” – a declaration that, although it may not promise salvation, does ensure an exit from hell.

Ticket prices: Stalls: 20€, 17€ (students) |Boxes: 15€, 12€ (students) | Balcony: 10€, 8€ (students)

Book your tickets here

Opera double bill
Gian Carlo Menotti, Francis Poulenc
L’Amour à trois / La Voix humaine
22, 24 October 2025 • Starts at: 20.30
Thessaloniki Concert Hall, Emilios Riadis Hall (Μ2)
Co-production between the Greek National Opera and the Thessaloniki Concert Hall
Direction: Angela-Kleopatra Saroglou
Sets, costumes: Yiannis Katranitsas
Lighting design: Tryfonas Kechagias
Music coach: Nikos Zafranas
Siranous Tsalikian (soprano)
Zafiris Angelopoulos (baritone)
Vassilis Varvaresos (piano)

Two major works of the 20^th century – the comic opera The Telephone, or L’Amour à trois, 1947, by Gian Carlo Menotti, and the one-act opera La voix humaine, 1959, by Francis Poulenc, based on Jean Cocteau’s theatrical monologue of the same name –  are staged together through a single narrative revolving around a woman and her relationship with the telephone.

In the first work, we encounter a young woman living glued to her telephone every day, much like we all are today with our cell phones. Ten years later, in La voix humaine, we watch her struggling with loss and desperately trying to hold on to a voice that is fading away.

With the same performer embodying both aspects of the same figure, the performance portrays the passage of time and the progression of a life in the 21^st century. The set, which is a living room with a telephone and a grand piano as fixed points, evolves alongside the heroine. To maintain narrative consistency, the work The Telephone is also presented in French, creating an unbreakable dramaturgical circle. “By connecting these two works through a single protagonist, Lucy, we witness the progression of her addiction and explore the deeper causes that lead people to become addicted to their phones and social media,” notes the director, Angela-Kleopatra Saroglou.

Ticket prices:
25€, 20€, 15€ (reduced)
Book your tickets here

Music theatre • New production
Leon A. Nar
Madre Salonico
30, 31 October 2025 • Starts at: 21.00
Thessaloniki Concert Hall, Emilios Riadis Hall (Μ2)
Production: Greek National Opera Alternative Stage
Text: Leon A. Nar
Stage direction: Victor Arditti 
Adaptation of Sephardic songs, original music: Martha Mavroidi
Sets & costume designer: Maria Panourgia
Lighting: Melina Mascha
Video: Marios Gampierakis
Assistant to the director: Anna-Maria Iakovou
Zana: Eleni Ouzounidou
Ido: Leonardos Batis 
Smari Musical Ensemble: Simos Papaspyrou (ney), Nikos Paraoulakis (ney), Stratis Psaradellis (Constantopolitan lyre), Martha Mavroidi (lavta, singing), Yorgos Tamiolakis (violoncello), Giorgos Ventouris (double bass)
Also featuring Fotis Siotas (violin, voice)

Who still speaks “Ladino”, the mother tongue of the Thessaloniki Jews? Who still sings Sephardic songs? The successful music theatre production Madre Salonico, written by the distinguished author Leon A. Nar and directed by the experienced director Victor Arditti, showcases a language on the brink of extinction, along with songs from Jewish communities in the Mediterranean, intending to bridge the present with the past as a gesture of memory.  The work is presented in a blend of “Ladino” (the Spanish-Hebrew language of Sephardic communities) and Greek.

The central characters of the work are Ido, a third-generation immigrant living in New York, and Zana, his grandmother and a once-famous singer. The two of them share experiences, memories, and concerns, focusing on the historical journey of the Thessaloniki Jews, which is intertwined with the city’s collective memory. Grandmother and grandson reminisce; Zana reflects on her successful career as a singer, performing Sephardic songs on stage while searching for her childhood love, who survived the Nazi concentration camps.

Ticket prices:
Stalls: 15€, 10€ (reduced)
Main box, boxes: 10€, 8€ (reduced)
Book your tickets here

More info at  e-dimitria.gre-dimitria.gr

Lead Donor of the GNO