A travelling programme from the Greek National Opera brings performances to communities in Greece far from the cultural mainstream – revealing how outreach, heritage, and artistic reinvention are reshaping its cultural landscape
Stop it, Karagiozis is still changing his trousers – for you!’ The teacher tries in vain to prevent a scuffle among the children, who can hardly wait. Umbrellas get tangled, neon-coloured rain capes tumble over one another, while the gloomy clouds in the sky finally give way to a patch of blue. After the heavy downpours of the night, which flooded half of Kozani, around 300 children aged six to eight crowd on to the narrow path between the small Orthodox church on the hillside and the municipal theatre 50 metres downhill. A shrill procession that splashes puddle-mud instead of holy water.
Karagiozis! The black-eyed shadow-play jester, who in every one of his tricks also takes on those in power, is still known to every child in Greece. Less well-known is that he once came to the country as Karagöz with the Turkish occupiers, but has asserted himself as a Greek cultural figure for two centuries now.
In an adaptation by Dimitris Dimopoulos, he is now part of a large-scale outreach programme run by the Greek National Opera (GNO), supported by the Greek Ministry of Culture and a donation of 1.4 million euros from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
Through 100 free events across all artistic genres, the aim is to ‘reach those who otherwise have no access to opera, music, or ballet.’ To achieve this, GNO artists travel across the country, says Artistic Director Giorgos Koumendakis: ‘To islands off the tourist routes, to border regions, to Thrace, Thessaly, Macedonia, the Peloponnese and Crete.’ The goal is ‘to reach people, rather than waiting for them to seek out the theatre’.
Ahead of the programme, Greek Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni emphasised that music, theatre and dance are vital – for social cohesion as much as for economic growth. Greece has undergone a remarkable transformation that has continuously strengthened culture, particularly the performing arts. Investment in culture rose from 28 million euros in 2018 to 35 million in 2019. In 2025, it stood at 318 million euros.
In Kozani, impatient children’s fists now drum on the theatre doors. The city once grew wealthy through the cultivation of crocus flowers; its saffron is still considered among the finest. But today, the largest city in the Greek region of Western Macedonia is one of the poorest in the country, with an unemployment rate of over 35 per cent. For decades, lignite mining shaped the region; now it is groaning under the strain of economic transition.
On the shadow stage of the municipal theatre, Karagiozis whooshes down the chimney in greeting – landing on the parquet floor with a dry, if sooty, backside. He and his sons are known for their coarse jokes and for always being hungry.
‘In Kozani, people are hungry for theatre,’ says Christina Polychroniadou, a production assistant with the GNO Alternative Stage, who on tour also takes on stage management duties. ‘There is little to do here beyond the confines of one’s own home,’ she explains – especially for children.
The theatre, a functional building from the 1980s, has plenty of space, but little else.
For Karagioszis the team has brought everything from Athens: lighting, sound equipment, the shadow stage, costumes and props. It all has to fit into a small truck – and go up fast, explains Christina Polychroniadou. Her phone buzzes. A school principal asks whether there are still seats available for the second performance at 11am. In Kato, a mountain village, she recounts, the mayor helped set up chairs; the pupils were driven to the theatre in police cars because the local bus service had broken down. The phone buzzes again: shoes for the evening performance can now be picked up – the cobbler around the corner doesn’t want any money for them. He just wants the theatre to come back.
When Karagioszis’s bulbous nose looms behind the curtain, the children shriek with delight. He wants to get a theatre on its feet – and simply carts his little house up onto the roof of the Sultan’s palace. Quick-witted, he explains why working at the opera is worth it: no lyra played there like at his traditional performances, but you can earn hundreds of thousands of lire, he declares, and at last his hump would truly come into its own: Karagiozis the character actor becomes Rigoletto, the evil dwarf.
He feels sorry for the soloists as lonely street singers, but the chorus spreads good cheer. And really, singing can’t be that hard, can it, when so many try it: spoken, croaked. On his first attempt, Karagiozis loses his voice – to the children’s delight. But when the powerful baritone of Giannis Selitsaniotis blends into his broken muttering, the hall falls silent. And even more so when Marilena Striftobola, with great courage and tenderness, launches into Gilda’s lament, her slender shadow towering over the sultan’s palace. ‘That’s Greek, but somehow different,’ whispers a girl.
It’s a moment that captures the magic of musical theatre: a poetic balancing act between pocket opera and shadow play. It conveys not only the humorous transition from folk tone to classical vocal art, but also the striking similarity between stereotypical puppet gestures and operatic ones. An experience whose shadows may stretch into the future, a spark has certainly been lit in the hall.
The journey ends – after a stopover in Athens – in Kalamata in the southern Peloponnese. Alongside olives, the city is also famous for its dance festival, which since 1995 has attracted a growing specialist audience.
Kozani in Macedonia, Greece (Photo: Adobe Stock)
Here too it has rained; clouds hang low over the roof of the Kalamata Dance Megaron, the only dance venue of this size in Greece. The cooperation with the Greek National Opera makes it possible to open the house outside the season, explains Artistic Director Tzeni Argyriou, standing in front of the costumes from The Birds by Aristophanes – the opening production from 30 years ago, now on display for the anniversary year.
The birds’ innate scepticism toward those in power seems to have crept into the movements of dancer Vangelis Bikos, who in his solo choreographed by Konstantinos Rigos lets a phoenix with many faces emerge. Bikos strikingly lays bare gestures of self-empowerment and despair – a study of the vulnerability and fragility of the individual body.
The soil of the Greek landscape is soaked in myths that have shaped and transformed culture across Europe. Our understanding of theatre was born in Athens, at the foot of the Acropolis. Dionysus demonstrated the curse and illusion of gold, but above all showed how to celebrate exuberantly – festivals where music, dance, ecstasy, and catharsis flowed into one another. The play with form, transgression and reinterpretation, comedy and tragedy – all of this began here.
And so this journey through the Greek provinces not only brings theatre in all its diversity to the most remote corners of the country, but also asks about roots, connections, and new forms of cohesion – and touches scars that are far from healed. ON
