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The Greek National Opera opens the 2026/27 season with a new grand international co-production with two leading opera companies from Europe and the United States: the Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the New York Metropolitan Opera. Monteverdi's L'Orfeo-a landmark work in the history of music that marks the birth of opera as a complete dramatic art-is presented for the first time by the GNO. Bearing the stamp of the renowned and versatile artist William Kentridge, this emblematic work transforms into a multilayered audiovisual landscape, where themes of memory, time, and loss take on form, movement, and material dimensions. L'Orfeo will run from 30 October for eight performances at the Stavros Niarchos Hall. The production is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) to enhance the GNO's artistic outreach.
Composed in 1607 at the Duke of Mantua's commission, Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo successfully unites music, speech, and theatrical action into a single system of expression, in which each element serves the dramatic truth. Using the ancient Greek myth as a vehicle, the work that shaped the subsequent development of opera transcends time, addressing fundamental existential questions such as love, loss, the fear of death, and the invincible human desire to overcome it. Four centuries after its creation, Monteverdi's L'Orfeo remains a highly contemporary work that touches the core of human existence through the simplicity and purity of its form.
The plot unfolds between two realms: the living and the dead. The celebrations for Orpheus and Eurydice's wedding are abruptly interrupted by her sudden death, leaving Orpheus faced with the unthinkable. Refusing to accept his fate, he decides to descend to Hades, attempting to move the dark deities with the power of his music and bring his beloved one back to life. This journey, filled with trials, becomes a deep inner quest in which hope coexists with doubt and redemption with loss.
A typical example of the early Baroque aesthetic, L'Orfeo combines structural simplicity with unprecedented expressive density. Through its recitatives, arias, choral and orchestral passages, Monteverdi crafts a musical universe in which speech and music operate inseparably, serving the drama with unparalleled directness. The famous aria 'Possente spirto', one of the opera's highlights, captures music's power to persuade and evoke emotion while also revealing the protagonist's technique and expressive artistry.
Born in 1955 in Johannesburg, William Kentridge is recognised worldwide as one of the most renowned and versatile visual artists, with a unique presence in both the creation of audiovisual works and in opera and theatre performances. His method combines design, writing, film, performance, music, and theatre, along with collaborative practices, all aimed at creating works of art based on politics, science, literature, and history, through their contrasts and uncertainties. He has left his mark on emblematic opera productions, including Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, Berg's Wozzeck, and Lulu, which have been presented at the world's most prestigious opera houses, such as the New York Metropolitan Opera, La Scala in Milan, English National Opera, the Lyon Opera, the Amsterdam Opera, and the Sydney Opera, as well as the Salzburg Festival. His works have also been showcased at some of the world's greatest museums, including MOMA (New York), the Louvre Museum (Paris), Whitechapel, the Royal Academy of Arts (London), and the Queen Sofía National Museum Art Centre (Madrid), among others.
William Kentridge's new directorial approach highlights the opera's openness while drawing on its distinctive visual language. Through an elaborate blend of live action, animation, video projections, and collages, a multilayered stage environment is created. The direction does not seek to explain the work but rather to create space for various interpretations, calling attention to its gaps and silences as active elements of the dramaturgy.
