Ο Πετρούσκα του Στραβίνσκυ

Περιγραφή στα Αγγλικά

A drum roll, a curtain, and three puppets jerk to life in front of a Shrovetide fair: a ballerina, a Moor, and Petrushka, the sawdust clown cursed with a human heart. On Friday 11 December 2026 at 20:30, the Athens State Orchestra brings «Ο Πετρούσκα του Στραβίνσκυ» — Stravinsky's Petrushka, in the tighter 1947 concert version — to the Christos Lambrakis Hall of the Megaron for one night.

The conductor is Georgios Balatsinos, the Greco-Swiss conductor who serves as the orchestra's artistic director. Before the fairground, Mozart: the Sinfonia concertante for violin, viola and orchestra in E-flat major, K. 364, with Iason Keramidis and Ilias-Ion Livieratos as soloists. Keramidis, born in Kavala, has served as deputy concertmaster of the Munich Philharmonic; here he trades phrases with Livieratos's viola in a piece built so that neither instrument wins, only answers — Mozart even asks the viola to tune a half-step high so it can match the violin's brightness.

The crowd at a State Orchestra evening is its own study: subscription listeners who have held the same seats for decades, conservatory students folded into the reduced-price zones with pocket scores, couples who come for the Mozart and stay to argue about the Stravinsky.

The Christos Lambrakis Hall is a formal shoebox with organ pipes ranked across its back wall, big enough that Stravinsky's fair — piled-up barrel-organ tunes, brass shoving like a market throng, the piano hammering at the centre of the 1947 orchestration — has room to swing between riot and music-box delicacy. The dress code is smarter than a club night but nobody checks your outfit, and the door itself is simple: tickets run 35, 25, 20 and 15 EUR, with 10 EUR reduced seats, and presale opens Monday 27 July 2026 on webtics.megaron.gr, the Megaron's own ticketing site.

The Stravinsky plays as four tableaux: the fair, Petrushka's cell, the Moor's room, then the fair again, where the puppet dies in the snow and his ghost jeers from the theatre roof. The 1947 version strips the orchestra to its muscles — leaner winds, sharper piano, the two-key "Petrushka chord" still stinging in the clarinets.

If you want an orchestral evening that resolves — a consoling final cadence, a tune to hum on the ride home — this programme half-refuses: the Mozart grants it, the Stravinsky ends on a question mark and a sneer. But if you want to hear a symphony orchestra impersonate an entire fairground — vendors, dancing bear, accordion vamps, grief — this is the pairing to hear it in.

The Megaron stands on Vasilissis Sofias avenue and is accessible by metro, with Megaro Moussikis station at its doorstep; the evening starts at 20:30.

One night at the fair — the puppet never gets out of it, but you do.