Shades in Hades available on GNO TV

After its premiere on the Alternative Stage of the Greek National Opera, distinguished composer Alexandros Mouzas’ new music theatre work Shades in Hades, directed by Thomas Moschopoulos, comes on GNO TV. This music theatre work for actor and musical ensemble will be available on nationalopera.gr/GNOTV/en from 1 April until 31 July 2022.

Shades in Hades makes use, exclusively, of Lord Byron’s original texts selected from his last letters from Greece, his narrative work Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, his play Cain, as well as his poems. The work describes Byron’s descent, as an archetypical “fallen angel”, into the humid and dystopian environment of Missolonghi, into a Hades that sets traps in his Shades, into an absolutely Greek Gothic environment.

Against the background of an an evocative, soaked set vividly conveying the sense of a fantasy-like Hades full of shades, premonitions and memories, Alexandros Mouzas’ atmospheric music flirts with a film aesthetic, while accompanying in a unique way the taxing performance of actor Christos Loulis. The latter delivers in turn an ideal reading of Lord Byron, as a man who is playful and poetic, obsessive and captive of his passions, but also a glorious architect of his own fate.

GNO TV is a new strand of Greek National Opera’s programming, made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [ www.SNF.org ] to enhance the Greek National Opera’s artistic outreach.

Shades in Hades was commissioned by the GNO Alternative Stage and is part of the thematic cycle “Odes to Byron”, which pays tribute to the emblematic Romantic poet and philhellene. The work is presented in collaboration with The Messolonghi Byron Society.

https://www.nationalopera.gr/en/news-features/item/4288-alexandros-mouzas-shades-in-hades-directed-by-thomas-moschopoulos-comes-on-gno-tv