Requiem for the End of Love

Lead Donor of the GNO & Production donor

Major sponsor

Requiem for the End of Love, a work that marked the artistic scene of the 1990s, is coming for twelve unique performances on 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, and 30 January 2026 at the Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera in the SNFCC. This emotionally powerful performance-installation signals the highly anticipated reunion of two emblematic fellow-travellers from the legendary Edafos Dance Theatre, director and choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou, and composer Giorgos Koumendakis, in a new interpretation by internationally renowned conductor Teodor Currentzis. The production’s major sponsor is PPC. The production is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) to enhance the Greek National Opera’s artistic outreach.

The year 2026 begins for the Greek National Opera with the grand premiere of Requiem for the End of Love, one of the most emblematic works from the early creative period of composer and GNO Artistic Director Giorgos Koumendakis, in a new performance-installation featuring the signature of Dimitris Papaioannou and showcasing fifty performers on stage. The internationally renowned Greek maestro Teodor Currentzis will conduct soloists from the GNO Orchestra, the ΜEIZON Ensemble, and sopranos Diana Nosyreva and Ksenia Dorodova.

Requiem for the End of Love by Giorgos Koumendakis was first performed in 1995 at the old Electric Power Station of PPC in Neo Faliro as the first chapter of the performance-installation A Moment’s Silence, conceived, directed, and choreographed by Dimitris Papaioannou. With the trauma induced by the death of beloved friends from AIDS remaining unresolved and with ‘fear haunting the love lives of an entire generation’, Dimitris Papaioannou asked Giorgos Koumendakis to compose a ‘death tempest’—a requiem for those who lost their lives to AIDS. In the second chapter of that same performance, a reluctant hope for life was conveyed by Manos Hadjidakis’ Songs of Sin, based on poetry by Dinos Christianopoulos.

Thirty-one years later, after cycles that have opened and closed and paths that were sometimes parallel and at other times opposing, Dimitris Papaioannou sets up the great ladder for this stage installation at the Greek National Opera and reworks anew the Requiem for the End of Love, ‘one of Giorgos Koumendakis’ most powerful music pieces’, as he notes.

The synergy of these two creators, who paved the way for a new stage language in dance, theatre, opera, and even at the Olympic Games ceremonies, is complemented by an ingenious maestro whose name is internationally hailed for his idiosyncratic interpretations of major symphonic works and operas: Teodor Currentzis.

Twenty-four years after the dissolution of Edafos Dance Theatre, which left an indelible mark on the Greek artistic scene during its seventeen-year existence, Greek and international audiences will have the chance to rediscover a work by Dimitris Papaioannou that strikes a balance between physical theatre and visual installation, based on a musical piece that serves as an early dramatic operatic harbinger in Giorgos Koumendakis’ compositional career.

The dynamic collaboration between Papaioannou and Koumendakis during the 1990s led to the first public artistic acknowledgment of the AIDS epidemic in Greece and the rights of an entire community.