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10 Headline Acts to Catch at the 2019 Athens Festival

Since antiquity, Athenians have had an unshakeable appetite for the arts. Each summer, the Athens and Epidaurus Festival celebrates this love of culture with three months of music, theatre, dance and visual arts staged at venues all over the city. Here are 10 hot tickets from this year’s line-up to catch if you’re in Athens. Book early, as tickets sell out fast. 
 

  1. Two British music legends will be playing the epic Odeon of Herodes Atticus beneath the Acropolis. Those hirsute doyens of progressive rock Jethro Tull reprise rock anthems from their 50-year run, including “Locomotive Breath” and “Too Old to Rock ‘n’ Roll Too Young to Die” (15 June). 
  2. Melancholic Nottingham band the Tindersticks—who’ve built an affinity with Greek audiences—return for another hit of their sensual soul riffs (13 July). 
  3. If your tastes run more to the classics, Russian violin maestro Maxim Vengerov teams up with the Athens State Orchestra to perform Brahm’s famously tricky “Concerto for violin and orchestra in D major, op. 77” at th ancient Odeon (16 July).
  4. See avant-garde Greek choreographer Constantine Rigos’ reboot of Verdi’s La Traviata in a Greek National Opera production with Cuban-American soprano Lisette Oropesa in the title role (27, 28, 30 & 31 July).
  5. Some of this year’s most thought-provoking Athens Festival tickets will be staged at Peiraios 260, a former warehouse in Tavros. In her must-see video installation Love Story, South African artist Candice Breitz enlists Hollywood stars Julianne Moore and Alec Baldwin to challenge our empathy mechanisms through re-enactments of the real experiences of six refugees (30 June – 30 July). 
  6. New Yorker Nora Chipaumire channels the anarchic spirit of Patti Smith in her hybrid performance #PUNK that combines theatre and dance inspired by the award-winning artist’s formative years in Zimbabwe (30 May – 1 June). 
  7. Famed French choreographer Boris Charmatz—master of conceptual dance—premieres his electric new work infini (11 – 14 July).
  8. Hot theatrical director Thanos Samaras provokes with a new production inspired by the ancient Greek myth of Chrysippus and its theme of off-limits desire, tweaked for the modern age (31 May – 4 June). 
  9. For those allergic to fairytale endings, the profoundly personal text of the Greek poet and songwriter Manos Eleftheriou, Strange Doors, is awakened in a harrowing performance by Nena Menti (11- 15 July)
  10.  Finally, if a bit of controversy lights your fire, Canadian director Robert LePage guests directs the French Theatre du Soleil  in the searing Kanata—a difficult-to-watch story about indigenous tensions throughout Canada’s 200-year-history. It will be staged at the Megaron Concert Hall (July 13-15).