Opera
Rhea
Conductor: Vyron Fidetzis
Semi-staged production Director: Nikos Diamantis
PREMIERE 19 MAY 2017
19 May 2017
Olympia Theatre
At 20:00
At 20:00
With the Orchestra, Choir and Soloists from the Greek National Opera
The Greek National Operas 73-year history at the Olympia Theatre comes to an end with the first work it performed in 1944. In a highly symbolic move, the Greek National Opera is honouring its past by presenting Spyridon Samaras' important opera, Rhea, which marked the Olympia Theatre as the Greek National Operas base on 1.4.1944, conducted by Antiochos Evangelatos, with Mireille Flery in the lead role, Nikos Glynos as Lysia and Titos Xirellis as Guarca.
Rhea was first staged in 1908 at the Teatro Verdi in Florence. No reviews from that time survive. However, the congratulatory telegrams from Puccini and Mascagni to Samaras indicate that it was a major success. The work includes almost in its final version the hymn of the Olympic Games, which Samaras had composed in 1896 for the first Olympic Games of the modern age in Athens.
The opera tells the tale of the illicit love affair of Rhea (wife of the Genoese governor Spinola) for the Greek athlete Lysia on the island of Chios in 1400. Shortly before Rhea abandons Chios for Lysia, Guarca who is also in love with Rhea, kills him and Rhea commits suicide.
Greek National Opera
