Nicola Piovani: Great Music-Great Movies (8/7)

Oscar-winning composer Nicola Piovani has scored over 200 films, working with legends like Fellini, Benigni, and the Taviani brothers. His music, rich in emotion and narrative sensitivity, blends nostalgia with hope, often inspired by actors’ expressions. This concert features orchestral suites from La Vita è Bella, La voce della luna, and Fiorile, showcasing Piovani’s timeless ability to let music speak where words fall silent.

Rigoletto (26, 27, 29 & 30/7)

A revival of the production first staged at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in 2022 closes this year’s theatre program at the same venue, marking the end of both the Festival’s drama nights and the 2024–25 artistic season of the Greek National Opera. Katerina Evangelatos’ bold direction relocates Verdi’s Rigoletto to the 1980s, setting the opera in a conservative, religious society riddled with prejudice and deep-rooted misogyny.

 

Theodor Currentzis: Songs on the Death of Children (19/7)

Teodor Currentzis, one of today’s most provocative and sought-after conductors, brings his dynamic presence to the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus with his orchestra Utopia for a program devoted entirely to Gustav Mahler. The concert begins with the deeply moving Kindertotenlieder, a song cycle on loss and memory, interpreted by mezzo-soprano Eve-Maud Hubeaux. After the interval, Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 reveals its delicate textures and lyrical charm, culminating in the final soprano solo, performed by Regula Mühlemann.

Europa’s pledge / Le Serment d’Europe (1 & 2/8)

Lebanese-Canadian playwright and director Wajdi Mouawad, renowned for Incendies, returns to Greece with a new work inspired by ancient heroines. Known for exploring identity, memory and trauma through the lens of tragedy, Mouawad makes his Epidaurus debut with a multilingual production created for the Contemporary Ancients Cycle. The performance features an international cast and stars Juliette Binoche in a leading role, continuing their long-standing artistic collaboration.

Oresteia (22 & 23/8)

Theodoros Terzopoulos’ acclaimed production of Aeschylus “Oresteia” returns to the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, concluding this year’s festival cycle. With its striking blend of intellectual rigor and visceral intensity, the performance has toured Greece, Cyprus, and Italy’s historic Teatro Olimpico. A collaboration with the National Theatre, the production stands as both a political act and a spiritual reflection on justice, power, and human fate.

 

 

A theater play adapted from the internationally acclaimed novel by Nobel Laureate Han Kang, comes to the stage under the direction of Italian theatre artist Daria Deflorian. Han Kang, the first South Korean woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature (2024), tells the unsettling story of Yeong-hye – a seemingly ordinary woman who, after a violent dream, renounces meat. Her quiet rebellion triggers a chain reaction, unraveling her relationships and shaking the foundations of her identity.

Hystory (21-24/7)

The new work by choreographer Patricia Apergi, plays on the meanings of hystera (womb), hysteria, and history. Inspired by the ancient belief in the “wandering womb”, the piece explores how long-held views about women as unstable or irrational shaped ideas about gender, the body, and mental health. Following Planites, which focused on men, Apergi now centers women – restless, resistant, and in search of equality.

 

The latest creation by Dafin Antoniadou, revolves around an enigmatic figure that embodies both the archetypal and the immaterial. Structured as a ritual, the performance follows this presence through symbolic stages –birth, union, and death– drawing from myth, memory, and transformation. Through movement, sound, and stark visual language, Darkest White opens a dialogue between ancestral memory and an uncertain future, inviting the audience into a space of quiet intensity and reflection.

 

 

One of this year’s most intriguing surprises is a film project set to premiere at the Little Theatre of Ancient Epidaurus in collaboration with the Hellenic Film Academy: Electra 7. Seven directors, each film a chapter of a shared screenplay by Panagiotis Christopoulos, offering seven cinematic takes on the myth. With a common cast and minimal dialogue, the film explores themes of power, silence, surveillance and the fragmented female identity across