Timoleon and Julia: A Baroque Story of Cross-Dressing Early Music Days

Περιγραφή στα Αγγλικά

A baroque plot turns on a disguise the audience sees through and the characters do not: Timoleon and Julia stages exactly that kind of story, a tale of cross-dressing drawn from the baroque theatrical tradition and rebuilt for a contemporary stage. It is the centrepiece of the second cycle of the Greek National Opera's Early Music Days, a limited November festival, and unlike the concerts around it, this is a fully staged production.

The cycle is called Active Pasts, curated by harpsichordist Markellos Chrysikopoulos, and its premise is that early repertoire is material to be reworked rather than kept under glass. Argyro Chioti directs — a theatre-maker who moves between Greece and France and now leads the National Theatre — and the piece is a co-production between the Greek National Opera and the National Theatre, pairing an early-music ensemble with theatre-trained performers.

The crowd is a mix the billing almost guarantees: opera audiences curious about staging, theatre audiences curious about baroque, and the early-music following that tracks Chrysikopoulos's programming from one season to the next.

The setting is the Alternative Stage at the SNFCC, the Greek National Opera's smaller, flexible room, which suits a production meant to be watched as theatre rather than heard as a concert. The mood is closer to a playhouse than a recital hall. The sound is period-instrument accompaniment under sung and spoken voice. The door is seated and ticketed.

Expect the cross-dressing conceit to do double duty — as the engine of the original baroque comedy and as a lever for a modern reading of who gets to play whom on stage. Staging early opera as living theatre, rather than a costumed museum piece, is the whole wager of the Active Pasts cycle, and Timoleon and Julia is where the festival puts it to the test.

If you want a straight period-instrument recital, this is not it: it is theatre with a baroque score underneath. But if you want to see how a baroque disguise plot reads when a contemporary director takes it seriously, this is the show to book.

The SNFCC is off the metro; reach it by the free Syntagma shuttle, the coastal tram, or a taxi, and budget extra time on a staged night, when seating tends to close firmly at curtain. Tickets carry reduced rates for students and seniors.

Timoleon and Julia is the only fully staged title in the Early Music Days line-up — the one night the festival trades the concert platform for a set.