Hymns of the Divine Liturgy - Hymns from the Paraklesis and Salutations to the Most Holy Theotokos (Virgin Mary Byzantine Music Days Festival

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A single low note holds under everything — the ison, the drone that Byzantine chant is built on, one section sustaining a pitch while the melodic line turns above it. On 22 October that sound fills the Greek National Opera's Alternative Stage inside the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC, ΚΠΙΣΝ), on the second of four nights the house has set aside for Byzantine Music.

The four evenings form the Days of Byzantine Music, a debut strand of the Alternative Stage's 2026-27 season subtitled 'genera and generations of the chanting art today'. It is curated by Zacharias Karounis, born 1977 in Pakia, Laconia: a chanter with a Byzantine-music degree from the Athens Conservatory and postgraduate work in Liturgics and Hymnology at the Theological School of Athens, who has performed with the National Theatre and Hadjidakis's Orchestra of Colours and worked alongside Domna Samiou, Giorgos Dalaras and Stavros Xarchakos.

The nights are programmed in liturgical rather than calendar order, so the church year, not October, sets the sequence: the Nativity hymns open on the 21st. This second night carries the Hymns of the Divine Liturgy together with the Paraklesis and the Salutations — the Chairetismoi — to the Most Holy Theotokos, the supplicatory and praise cycles addressed to the Virgin Mary. Across the strand Karounis brings together historic choirs, established protopsaltes, younger voices and women's chanting ensembles.

Expect a crowd of cantors who chant these lines every Saturday evening of Lent, theology and musicology students, and listeners drawn to the architecture of a monophonic tradition that never took on Western harmony. The Alternative Stage is a black box with retractable seating, so the sound arrives without a nave's long reverberation — you hear the intervals dry and exact, closer than any church would place you.

If you are expecting an orchestra, polyphony or a soloist's showcase, this is a different musical logic entirely — one voice-line and a drone, ornament measured in microtones. But if you want to hear how the Salutations to the Theotokos actually sound in the mouths of the people who carry the craft forward, this is the night the cycle belongs to the Virgin.

The SNFCC sits on the Kallithea coast with no metro station — reach it by the free SNFCC shuttle from central Athens, by tram, or by bus. The concert begins at 20:30; tickets are through ticketservices.gr.

Four nights trace the whole church year in chant; only this one turns to the Theotokos.