Something remarkable has been happening to opera in Greece. Since 2017, when the Greek National Opera left its historic Olympia Theatre in downtown Athens and moved to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center on the city’s waterfront, the company’s relationship with its audience has been transformed. Sold-out performances have become the norm; the quality and ambition of its productions are drawing increasing numbers of visitors from abroad; and high-profile collaborations – from filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos to performance-art pioneer Marina Abramović – have expanded the GNO’s global reach.
This November, the company hosted the International Opera Awards for the first time in Greece, with the Lifetime Achievement Award presented to acclaimed Greek mezzo-soprano Agnes Baltsa.
How did we get here? What turned attending a Greek National Opera performance into a must-do for visitors and what made opera appealing to audiences that, until recently, saw it as “elitist”? For this feature, we spoke with the company’s artistic director since 2017, composer Giorgos Koumendakis, and two of its leading singers, soprano Vassiliki Karagianni and baritone Dionysis Sourbis, as well as staff members from across the organization.
Spoiler alert: it all comes down to their outward-looking approach and unmistakable passion for what they do.
‘Opera … breathes alongside us.’
“Today, the Greek National Opera is the largest cultural organization in Greece in terms of staff, facilities, budget and artistic output,” says artistic director Giorgos Koumendakis. In its 85-year history, he explains, the company has never produced work on this scale nor enjoyed this level of public impact. From the moment the GNO moved into the SNFCC, he and his team made a conscious decision to take risks, abandon conservatism and spark collaborations across artistic disciplines and different creative schools, aiming to shape a new artistic identity. They did so to open the doors to new spectators of different generations, backgrounds and levels of familiarity with opera, all while respecting the company’s traditional audience.
A crucial step in this was building, essentially from scratch, a second hall: the Alternative Stage. Younger artists were given the freedom to develop dozens of new works that brought fresh energy to contemporary production. “We wanted to show that opera is a living contemporary art form that breathes alongside us.” But how does opera become truly attractive to a wide audience? “While absolute respect for the music and the libretto is essential, our era allows us great freedom in scenic and dramaturgical interpretation. That freedom, the cross-disciplinary collaborations, the inspired artists and, of course, the sheer power of opera itself make the art form incredibly appealing to an ever-growing audience.”
International partnerships, whether as co-productions with major opera houses and festivals, tour performances of the GNO’s repertoire abroad, or for the hosting of large-scale events such as the recent International Opera Awards, have greatly contributed to the company’s global visibility, Koumendakis says. “Add to that the hundreds of international media articles about our productions, which have placed us firmly on the map of Europe’s leading opera houses and made us a destination for opera lovers worldwide. Sometimes my colleagues and I joke about how difficult it was at the start to secure these collaborations, whereas now we’re the ones receiving increasingly interesting proposals from around the world.”
Sold-out performances are welcome, of course, because they generate revenue, but they are not the company’s guiding compass. “We should always think not only about what happens inside the auditorium, but also about the impact a performance will have on the person watching it and, by extension, on society. What matters is what the spectator takes with them, what will stay with them for months or years, enriching their life.” Among the coming season’s highlights, Koumendakis is eagerly anticipating “Requiem for the End of Love”(January 2026), for which he composed the music; “Anna Bolena” (March–April 2026); “Carmen” (April–June 2026); and “Medea,” which will be presented on June 20 at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus.
The performers’ perspective
Soprano Vassiliki Karagianni, whose name and career are closely tied to the GNO, says that foreign artists now see the company as a major opera house with which they hope to build ongoing collaborations. Karagianni – who has performed at La Scala in Milan and at London’s Covent Garden – points out that tourists make up a substantial part of the opera-going public in those cities as well. “Personally, I’ve never had any complaints about audiences, either abroad or in Greece. Once, in a city outside Athens, someone congratulated me in a supermarket, and this September, after the Traviata we presented with the GNO in China, people were waiting outside the theater asking for autographs!”
Baritone Dionysis Sourbis, who received the Laurence Olivier Award in 2016, honed his skills at the Olympia Theatre, becoming part of the GNO’s history nearly twenty-five years ago. “In Italian, opera literally means ‘work’; it doesn’t mean putting on a tailcoat and going to the theater. Opera is born from human passions such as jealousy and love, the emotions of ordinary people,” he says. Over the years, he’s seen the GNO’s audience evolve and expand, something he attributes to the company’s outward-looking approach, which began even before the move to the SNFCC, with initiatives such as the Suitcase Opera, bringing opera to unexpected spaces as early as 2011.
What makes opera sell?
Vasilis Louras, Head of the GNO’s Promotion Department, explains that the company’s growing visibility, both in Greece and abroad, is not driven solely by marketing campaigns. The strategy also includes hosting foreign journalists, collaborating with major international broadcasters such as the French network Mezzo, which screens GNO productions, and cultivating a strong social-media presence that brings opera closer to younger audiences. The results of this outward-looking approach are clearly reflected in the data he shared with us. In recent years, attendance at the GNO’s Main Stage and its summer productions at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus (before it closed for restoration in 2025) has consistently exceeded 90 percent. Between 2019 and 2023, audiences aged 25 to 34 increased by seven percent, a significant shift for an art form once considered inaccessible to younger generations. Ticketing data also shows that, for certain productions, international visitors account for up to 30 percent of the audience. Demand can be astonishing: the dozen January 2026 performances of “Requiem for the End of Love” by Giorgos Koumendakis, choreographed by Dimitris Papaioannou and conducted by Teodor Currentzis, sold out in just 2 hours and 50 minutes.
As Louras notes, box-office success depends above all on the work itself and its composer: works such as “Tosca” or “La Traviata” sell out within days. But equally strong is the draw of artists whose reputation extends beyond the opera world. Past productions led by figures such as Bob Wilson, Marina Abramović, Fanny Ardant and Yorgos Lanthimos have proven that star power can broaden audiences and guarantee commercial success.
Behind the scenes
Eirini Staikou has been working as an usher at the GNO since 2018. What struck her immediately was how many ushers are artists themselves: visual artists, actors and singers. “Audiences often react instinctively when they really love something,” she says. “They’ll burst into applause or even let out small exclamations.” For her, the most important part of the job is the GNO’s fully accessible performances. “The joy I see in those audiences is priceless.”
Evangelia Kourti, the GNO’s public relations officer, handles everything from VIP invitations to welcoming official guests and organizing post-performance events. In her work with leading figures of the opera world, she consistently hears them expressing the same sentiment: that the scale and quality of the GNO’s productions are now comparable to those of major international houses.
“I’m moved every time I get on the metro and see a poster for one of our productions – it gives me this feeling that we’re everywhere,” says stage manager Katerina Petsatodi, who has worked with the GNO for nearly fifteen years. “Even from the foreign creative teams I collaborated with back in the Olympia days, I now hear, ‘You’re operating on a completely different level.’ They recognize how far the organization has come since the move to the SNFCC.”
This article appeared in Greece Is (www.greece-is.com), a Kathimerini publishing initiative.
