"Bluebeard's Castle" - "Aleko" - Opera double bill at the Greek National Opera

ATLAS E.P.
Nov 19, 2024
2 min read

November 21st 2024

November 23rd 2024

Starts at: 19.30

ATLAS E.P. provides accessibility services for a captivating double bill of two masterful one-act operas that explore the transcendence of mental boundaries, written at the cusp between the 19th and 20th centuries.

The operas are presented with Sign Language Interpreting, Surtitling in Greek and Audio Description with voice-over for equal linguistic and sensory access.

Dual poster of the operas. A knife on the left on a red background. Chains on the right on a blue background.

Information about the operas below:

"Bluebeard's Castle" by Béla Bartók

Photo from the performance. Dimly lit, tilted room. A person stands by a bed and another on stairs.

The exceptionally successful production of Béla Bartók’s one-act opera Bluebeard’s Castle under the stage direction of Themelis Glynatsis, which premiered at the GNO in the 2022/23 season, will be the second part of the double bill. Béla Balázs’ libretto is based on Charles Perrault’s fairy tale La Barbe bleue and tells the story of two characters: Bluebeard and his latest wife, Judith. As Judith seeks to uncover her husband’s past, she opens the seven doors of Bluebeard’s castle, one by one. Behind each of them, she discovers a different world: her husband’s countless riches, heroism, and glory, but also pain, tears, blood, and cruelty.

Balázs’ symbolist libretto gave Bartók the chance to compose one of his most remarkable scores: he made use of the instrumental timbres of an exceptionally large orchestra, including even the majestic sound of the organ, to effectively capture the work’s mystical imagery.

"Aleko" by Sergei Rachmaninoff

Photo from the performance. Dancers in vibrant costumes twirl under string lights on stage, set against a large moon backdrop with silhouetted branches.

Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, one of the most popular composers of the 20th century, who became internationally famous primarily for his symphonic pieces and piano works, also composed three operas. The first was written in 1892 on the occasion of the composer’s graduation from the Moscow Conservatoire at the age of just 19. It is the one-act opera Aleko, based on Alexander Pushkin’s poem The Gypsies. The result was highly appreciated and honoured with the Gold Medal, winning the admiration of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, among others. A year later, it received its premiere to great success at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. In 1899, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Pushkin’s birth, Aleko was presented anew in Saint Petersburg, starring the young at the time but later famous bass Feodor Chaliapin in the title role.

The opera Aleko initiates a dialogue between two different worlds: the Gypsy community and the bourgeois culture. The work is about a cosmopolitan upper-class man who kills his Gypsy woman, Zemfira, and her lover, unable to accept the ideal of Gypsy freedom. In this early work of Rachmaninoff, the composer incorporates the European operatic and symphonic musical language, enriched with orientalist touches drawn from the Russian operatic tradition and elements reminiscent of ecclesiastical music.

Audience members who want to make use of the accessibility services are kindly requested to purchase their tickets at the GNO Box Office, by phone at 2130885700 or by email at boxoffice@nationalopera.gr. For any assistance required with the bookings, audience members may also contact ATLAS E.P. at +30 6993507553 or by email at askatlasep@gmail.com.