Greek National Opera Makes US Debut at Carnegie Hall

The Greek National Opera made its United States debut at Carnegie Hall with a program titled Nikos Kazantzakis: An Odyssey in Music. Kazantzakis's iconic character Zorba came alive on stage. Reviewer Susan Hall, filing for Slippedisc, called the night an overwhelming success.

The ensemble arrived with a serious commissioning history. The company has commissioned landmark composers Mikis Theodorakis, Manos Hadjidakis and Nikos Skalkottas. That lineage gave the Carnegie Hall program weight beyond a single celebratory evening.

Who performed what?

The Manos Hadjidakis Ensemble performed selections from Captain Michalis. The emergent soprano Maria Kostraki sang them. At Carnegie Hall, Hall reports, the bouzouki was amplified — the better to express Cretan defiance. The instrument carried a regional idiom onto the most prestigious concert stage in America.

The Greek National Orchestra played under Vassilis Christopoulos, music director of the Graz Opera. His podium credit signals the orchestra's European standing.

What stopped the show?

The renowned mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili took on Zorba in selections from Theodorakis's ballet suite. The off-beat rhythms drove the audience to clap for so long that the conductor had to pause. The orchestra could not continue over the noise.

Later, when Rachvelishvili took her seat, she joined the applause herself, making her hands an instrument in their own right. It was a rare moment: a soloist applauding the ensemble that had just backed her.

Hall closed her review with the program's own frame. Like Odysseus, she wrote, the Greek orchestra proved that the journey is what truly matters.

What does the debut change for the company?

A Carnegie Hall debut is a credential. It places the Greek National Opera before New York presenters, agents and critics in one evening, and it follows decades of work with composers of Theodorakis's stature. What the Times's silence means remains open. Hall notes pointedly that the paper considered the event unworthy of a review.

The gap between an audience that would not stop clapping and a critic's desk that did not send a reviewer now stands as the story's sharpest fact. The company, for its part, has its American debut behind it — and a Zorba suite that stopped a conductor mid-performance.

Photo: Giannis Antonoglou