After the successful presentation of the melodrama Frosiny in 2017, the Rafi Musical Theater Group returns to the Athens Concert Hall with the first Athenian performance of the work Koutalians or The Weight of History, an exciting musical-visual cantata in collaboration with the Oros Ensemble , composer Apostolis Koutsoyiannis, poet Marios Hatziprokopiou and visual artist Petros Touloudis. The play – a co-production of the Athens Concert Hall with the National Opera – will be presented in two unique performances at Nikos Skalkotas Hall on Friday 14th and Saturday 15th June 2024 at 9pm.
The performance Koutalianoi or The Weight of History illuminates moments in the life of the Koutalianos, as the masists of Asia Minor were called in various historical periods: the mythical Panagis Koutalianos and his descendant Dimitris, Haris Karpozilos and Yiannis Keskelidis or Samson, the giant of the Greek called “Attilius” or “Asiatis” (sic). The Greek masists still mark our historical memory as a reminder: on the fields, in the squares, in their well-polished muscles and chains, we projected the desires for our collective victories – and our defeats.
Through the legendary lives of these people, the transition from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century emerges in an allegorical way, with the successive displacements, the disaster of Asia Minor and the suffocating borders of the modern Greek State. And if the destiny of heroes is constant struggle until final victory, for these “giants with feet of clay” of Asia Minor their destiny was, more or less, predetermined, like the fallen empire that took them away. From the glory of youth and global fame to the fragile body of old age: to the painted beard of a former superman waiting for coins, before being buried in oblivion.
Theater / Cycling Bridges
Kutalianoi or The Weight of History
Friday 14th and Saturday 15th June 2024
Start time: 9pm
Athens Concert Hall
Nikos Skalkotas Hall
Co-production of the Athens Concert Hall with the National Opera
Conception, artistic direction: Rafi Musical Theater Group
Musical composition: Apostolis Koutsoyiannis
Libretto: Marios Hatziprokopiou
Visual editing, sculptures: Petros Toulodis
Kinesiology: Agni Papadeli-Rossetou
Lighting design: Kostis Mousikos
Costumes: Vangelis Mantzavinos
Tape editing: Michalis Kalkanis
They interpret:
Leto Messini, tweeter
Anastasia Kotsali, mezzo-soprano
Orós Set
Vassilis Zigeridis, canon
Konstantinos Zigeridis, sex
Irini Krikonis, violin
Antonis Tsachtanis, clarinet
The Koutalians or The Burden of History project was first presented at the Anaktoroupolis archaeological site in the context of the Ministry of Culture’s institution “All Greece is one culture” in 2022.
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Ticket prices: €8 (students, young people up to 25 years old, unemployed, disabled, 65+, with many children) ● €12 ● €18
Tickets: 210 72 82 333 ● www.megaron.gr
ELS Major Donor
STAVROS NIARCHOS FOUNDATION (SNF)
Rafi Musical Theater Group
The Rafi Musical Theater Group was founded in 2012 by opera singers Anastasia Kotsali and Leto Messini. Its aim is to highlight original approaches to known and unknown lyrical repertoire, often in the first Panhellenic performance, and its dialogue with dance, poetry and the visual arts. It collaborates with the National Opera, the Athens Epidaurus Festival, the Athens and Thessaloniki Concert Hall, the institution of the Ministry of Culture “All Greece is one culture”, etc. Curation of opera musical workshops for children in cooperation with the Educational and Social Actions of the National Opera for the period 2022-2024. In the summer of 2021, the Kournos Music Festival was opened in Lemnos, a new cultural institution, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, the North Aegean Region and the Municipality of Lemnos, which, with the art of song as its central axis, wishes to talk with the island’s inhabitants through multi-themed artistic activities.
Orós Set
The musical group Oros Ensemble was created in 2020 by a group of young musicians active in Greece and abroad, with the support of the National Opera and the support of the Vamvakou Revival group, in the context of the Revival of Vamvakous initiative, which is implemented with the support financial and ethical of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. The ensemble has a very strong concert presence throughout Greece, collaborating with the largest cultural institutions (indications: National Opera, Roof of the Onassis Foundation, “All of Greece is a culture”, Microdance Festival, Rethymno Days, Open Sails, etc. .), while already planning concerts in Greece and abroad for the coming months.
Petros Touloudis
Visual artist. He was born in Volos. He lives and works between Athens and Tinos. A graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts, he worked in the fields of architecture, opera and theater. Between 2015-2017 he was a scholarship holder at the Schloss Solitude Academy in Stuttgart. He is co-founder of the Tinos Quarry Platform, a contemporary art forum that has operated an artist hosting program in Tinos since 2015. He has held two solo exhibitions and has participated in group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. For ELS, he designed sets and costumes for the productions The Murderess and Essetai imar… by Giorgos Koumendakis, ORFEAS2021, Europeras by John Cage, The Princess and the Pea by Ernst Toch. He also staged The Silent Step of the Bear (Roof of the Onassis Foundation), Unknown Dialects – 8 musical lectures (Athens Epidaurus Festival), The Breath of Samuel Beckett (Beckett Festival, Teatro Sphendoni). With the Rafi Musical Theater Group he collaborated in the productions Frosiny (Athens Concert Hall), Idomeneas (Athens Epidaurus Festival) and Koutalianoi or The weight of history (“All of Greece is a culture” 2022). From 2004 to 2010 he worked on architectural projects of Aegean folk architecture in Tinos.