During the 2020-2021 artistic season, the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation supported the pilot educational programme “How did a raven end up in the belly of the whale?”, an interdisciplinary artistic and pedagogical initiative of the Educational & Social Actions of the Greek National Opera (GNO). The programme was implemented free of charge in cooperation with eight Primary schools in the Attica Region, aspiring to bring students and educators in contact with the fascinating world of music theatre, in its current form in the work of the GNO, through the use of modern and pioneering tools.

In the framework of the programme’s threefold goal, the participants were able to acquire fundamental artistic, technical and transferable skills; they were introduced into the creative process of the staging of music theatre performances; and they were able to use the relevant practice to improve their school performances. The programme concluded with the production of a contemporary musical performance, involving the students, a polyphonic ensemble of soloists from the “Youth Opera” and a chamber ensemble. A musical fairy tale of the same name, presented to the general public in May 2021 in the Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC), was based on a traditional myth of the Inuit tribe (the Eskimos of Alaska, Greenland and Canada) and tells the story of how the first song and the first dance were born into this world. In the summer of 2021, the programme was presented at the International Festival of the Arts of Ancient Olympia, during which the programme’s experienced team of coordinators held educational workshops based on the narrative and musical material of the musical performance.

• 180 students and 10 educators from 8 primary schools participated in the programme.

Watch the performance here.