“The 5th Season – Fat Tuesday”: The Novoflot return to the Alternative Stage of the Greek National Opera

The internationally acclaimed independent performing arts collective Novoflot, based in Berlin, returns to the Alternative Stage of the Greek National Opera at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center with its new production, “The 5th Season – Fat Tuesday”, a music-theatre approach to the international cultures of carnival. Conceived and directed by Sven Holm, with music by Antonis Anissegos, Michael Wertmüller, Antonio Vivaldi and others, and conducted by Vicente Larrañaga, “The 5th Season – Fat Tuesday” will be presented for two unique performances on 16 and 17 May 2026. The production is a co-production with Novoflot.

Carnival is conceived as an invention for “otherworldly” interventions in public discourse, a form of expression beyond conventional rhetoric, allowing today’s laughter to become tomorrow’s thought through masks and costumes.

The work serves as Novoflot’s artistic “resonating chamber” in times marked by deep paralysis and an inability to express oneself, while also offering an opportunity, in the face of international crises, to develop a new music-theatre language that explores new fields of utopia. “It is complicated to express oneself politically. Even more difficult to find common ground. This is a first attempt!”

Inspired by the traditions of New Orleans’ legendary Mardi Gras celebrations, Novoflot’s Athenian Fat Tuesday, the third part of the cycle The 5th Season, developed in collaboration with major institutions across Europe, becomes a point of departure and encounter for the creation of multiple highly musical “magical communities”, whose unusual and dazzling appearances herald the carnival of the future.

Together with the Thessaloniki-based contemporary music ensemble dissonArt ensemble, a diverse cast of singers and performers, soloists from the international jazz scene and musicians from the Athenian music scene, the production forms a hybrid work of music theatre featuring more than one hundred participants. The work combines excerpts from Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, jazz, Renaissance carnival music, marching band music, political speeches and premiere performances of contemporary works by Antonis Anissegos (Greece) and Michael Wertmüller (Switzerland).

Participating ensembles include the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Municipality of Chalandri, first- and second-year students of the Athens Conservatoire Higher Professional Dance School, the Choir of the Friendship Clubs (Senior Citizens) of the Municipality of Palaio Faliro, as well as the GNO Children’s Chorus, within the framework of its educational mission.

A few words about Novoflot

Novoflot was founded in Berlin in 2002 by director Sven Holm, conductor Vicente Larrañaga and performance artist and dramaturg Sebastian Bark. Since then, the collective has created more than fifty productions, later joined by dramaturg Malte Ubenauf and production manager Dörte Wolter.

Novoflot has appeared at numerous theatres and festivals in Berlin, including transmediale, Radialsystem, Sophiensæle, Hamburger Bahnhof, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, the Academy of Arts, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and Haus der Statistik. They have also reached wider audiences through productions at the Hamburg State Opera, the German National Theatre Weimar, the Ultraschall Festival and the Kölner Philharmonie.

The collective gained international recognition through appearances at venues such as the Warsaw Autumn Festival / Grand Theatre Warsaw, the National Theatre of Luxembourg, Trafó House of Contemporary Arts in Budapest, Gare du Nord in Basel, Schauspielhaus Zürich, Matucana100 in Santiago de Chile, Parque Cultural de Valparaíso and the Copenhagen Opera Festival. In recognition of the “high level of resonance achieved both throughout Germany and abroad”, Novoflot received the Tabori Award from the Fonds Darstellende Künste in 2014. In 2018, the book Novoflot: The 15th Season was published by Theater der Zeit. During their first visit to Greece in October 2022, Novoflot presented the innovative work The Opera #2 – On the Ropes (About the End) at the GNO Alternative Stage, as well as the allegorical, athletic and operatic performance The Opera #3 – The Deleted Scenes at the Clearing of Stavros Niarchos Park at the SNFCC.