Watching an ancient Greek tragedy at the magnificent Odeon of Herodus Atticus under the shadow of the Acropolis may be your highlight of your visit to Athens. The Athens and Epidaurus Festival is one of the most spectacular festivals in the world that promises magical summer nights full of dance, music and theatre. For sixty years, the festival has hosted some of the leading lights of dance, music and theatre! The program of the festival involves classical music, open-air theatre and opera in various locations in Athens. However, ancient Greek drama is staged at various ancient sites including the Epidaurus Ancient Theatre just two hours away from the city. The best-preserved and most beautiful ancient theatre of the country, Epidaurus Great Theatre, is one of the greatest masterpieces of ancient Greek art that has been included in the World Heritage Site list of UNESCO. Its superb acoustics, its architectural symmetry and its preserved construction are contributed to the creation of Athens and Epidaurus Festival, an institution that helped to the cultural revival of this theatre. The Greek Festival is focused in highlight Greek creativity; world premieres, orchestras, co-production with major foreign festivals, contemporary dance, well-known artists and visual artists! Undoubtedly, the Greek Festival is the ultimate art project for the cultural summer of Greece!

This year, the Greek Festival celebrates its 60^th anniversary! A wonderful festival that has lasted for sixty summers can only initiate emotions and sentiments of great admiration and respect. It has hosted some of the leading lights of dance, music and theatre, from Callas, Mitropoulos, Pavarotti and Theodorakis to Hadjidakis, Marinella, Protopsalti and Savvopoulos, even to Martha Graham, Fonteyn, Pina Bausch, the Pekin Opera and the Noh Theatre, and unquestionably the Greek Festival is one of the greatest cultural festivals of Greece, if not Europe. Highlights this year include Greece’s National Theatre performing famous anti-war plays of Euripides including The Trojan Woman, Arden Must Die directed by Harris Frangoulis, and Ajax by Sophocles directed from Sylvia Liouliou. As for dance shows, there is a valedictory appearance of the magnificent dancer Sylvie Guillem in a programme that includes choreography from William Forsythe, Russell Maliphant, Mats Ek and Akram Khan. The musical performances of the festival include a performance of San Giovanni Battista, a baroque drama based on an erotic oratorio by Allesandro Stradella combining baroque and oriental instrumentation by the Latinitas Nostra music ensemble with Nikos Karathanos and Markellos Chrysikopoulos; a celebration of Greek songwriter and composer Mikis Theodorakis by the Athens State Orchestra with soloist Dimitris Platanias; and a concert by Lakis Papadopoulos.

Greek Festival’s glorious story started from George Rallis in 1955. As the Minister of the Presidency in the government of Alexander Papagos, he decided to organize a cultural festival in Athens. And so he did. Dinos Giannopoulos, the renowned Greek theatre director, was invited over from America in order to establish the festival itself. He was the one who organized the programme of the festival, and who decided to include musical and theatre performances that will be held at the Odeon of Herodus Atticus. The “protagonist” of the first festival was the performance of the great Philharmonic Orchestra of New York, as conducted from Dimitris Mitropoulos.Over the course of the festival’s existence, it underwent into distinct historical periods. Its cosmopolitan period started when the festival was staged at the Odeon of Herodus Atticus as an attempt to bridge modern collections of antiquity with contemporary artistic output; this effort was made to incorporate all forms of high art. The two chief emphases of the Festival were performances from major orchestras, and the revival and contemporary staging of the theatrical works of classical antiquity along with an emphasis on dance performances. Major ensembles and soloists were invited to perform, and a concerted effort was made in order to give exposure to chief Greek artists. The Athens Festival became the focal point of the never-ending battle between modernism and the established forms of artistic expression. In 1967, however, all these concerns were swept aside due to the seven-year dictatorship put a stop to it, among many other things, with the spirit of the Western world.Greece’s complete isolation from the international community during the Junta years led to the stagnation of the Athens Festival. Nonetheless, the sense of freedom was developed again following the shift in the political climate in 1974. Its assignment under the bureaucratic control of the Ministry of Tourism coupled with the increasing intervention of arts agents in the selection of the programme saw the Athens Festival overcome by certain self-centeredness. To this extend, the institution lost its sense of direction and purpose becoming a mishmash of various events with significant names placed side-by-side with the insignificant and all in the name of society life. A cultural recession also helped drive the Festival to an impasse that had been apparent for years. A reversal of this state of affairs happened in 2006, in order to pursue modernism for another time and opened up the Festival to international productions along with the promotion of young Greek artists. A new identity was established with primary aim to reflect its host city and bring the livelier aspects of society back into play.

In 1938, Electra of Sophocles, starring from Katina Paxinou and directed from Dimitris Rondiris, was the first ever play to be staged at the most beautiful theatre in the world, without sets of lighting in the late afternoon sunshine. This historical production aimed to establish an annual season for Epidaurus, but the outbreak of the Second World War and the Greek Civil War were the major obstacles of its completion. Nevertheless, the 1954 production of Euripides Hippolytus’, directed from Dimitrios Rondiris, main aim was to serve as a dress rehearsal of the Epidaurus Great Theatre. This wonder of ancient Greek art became a great competitive arena for the arts. The first two decades of the festival, Epidaurus Great Theatre was reserved for the exclusive use of the National Theatre. Acclaimed actors and tragedians illustrated the classicizing aesthetic house style of the National Theatre while all the visual elements of the works were produced from the set designer Kleovoulos Kleonis and the costume designer Antonis Fokas. And the shining show started; Maria Callas, the leading light of the opera world, appeared at this theatre while the theatre welcomed the work of Aristophanes into its fold. In the summer of 1975, one year after the fall of the junta, the Epidaurus Festival opened its doors to the Theatro Technis, a company that had stood for innovation since its foundation in 1942, and which had been feared and shunned by the National Theatre. It mounted a production of the legendary comedy The Birds, an Aristophanic “Dionysian revel” directed by Karolos Koun, followed from the renowned production of Aeschylus’ The Persians directed by Koun again. In 1975, the State Theatre of Northern Greece took part in the Epidaurus Theatre for the first time with a production of Sophocles’ Electra directed by Minos Volanakis.  In the years that followed, the Cyprus Theatre Organization and the Spyros A. Evangelatos Amphitheatre make their Epidaurus debuts, and eventually all theatre companies were embraced by the institution. Foreign theatre companies have also been called upon to appear, as have young artists. Since 1955, the Greek Festival exists as a testament to the decision in order to develop the cultural landscape of Greece. Over the years, the Greek Festival has evolved, developed and grown both in size and scope, encapsulating a truly contemporary identity that revels in theatre, music, opera and art.

From the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, the Odeon of Herodus Atticus and the Little Theatre of Ancient Epidaurus to Onassis Cultural Center, the Megaron Athens Concert Hall and the National Archaeological Museum, the Greek Festival stages its events within masterpieces of ancient Greek art and contemporary sites of outstanding design. Can you imagine watching an ancient Greek drama at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus under the breeze of the summer? Or even listening to world-renowned opera performances at the Megaron? This years’ programme has lots of surprises! In Athens, the main center of the performances is the Odeon of Herodus Atticus, aka the Herodeon, where many plays of Aeschylus, Aristophanes and Sophocles were first performed while other events unfold in numerous venues including the Athens Concert Hall, the Benaki Museum, BIOS, Peiraios 260, Tehnopolis and the Hellenic Cosmos Cultural Centre. Find your favorite event from the programme of the Athens and Epidaurus Festival and book your tickets now!

For sixty years, the Athens and Epidaurus have hosted one of the most famous cultural festivals in the world, the celebrated Athens & Epidaurus Festival. This annual festival encompasses a broad spectrum of cultural events; classical music concerts, open-air theatre acts, dance shows and opera performances are staged in phantasmagorical venues. Undeniably, the Greek Festival is a festival for your bucket list. Keep updated for the 2015 performances of the Greek Festival that are scheduled from early June through to end August. You can find further information either from the official website of the Greek Festival, as the programme is always available online, or from the festival box office in the arcade at Panepistimiou 39 Street.

Watching an ancient Greek tragedy at the magnificent Odeon of Herodus Atticus at the shadow of the Acropolis will be your highlight of your visit to Athens. This years’ programme has lots of surprises! In Athens, the main center of the performances is the Odeon of Herodus Atticus, aka the Herodeon, where many plays of Aeschylus, Aristophanes and Sophocles were first performed while other events unfold in numerous venues including the Athens Concert Hall, the Benaki Museum, BIOS, Peiraios 260, Tehnopolis and the Hellenic Cosmos Cultural Centre. Find your favorite event from the programme of the Athens and Epidaurus Festival and book your tickets now!