CANCELED – Contra pédal

In the piano opera “Contra pédal” by Joseph Vallet, a descendant of Belgian glassmakers from Syros, to a libretto by
the poetess from Thessaloniki Elena Kiritsis, the piano is the protagonist and the centre of
the performance. The stories of six pianists unfold around this instrument, crucial for the dissemination of Western scholarly music. Finally, they end up confessing, in an abstract and completely allusive – poetic – way, their apprenticeship, their struggles and their struggle to conquer the instrument and its technique, and the unbearable loneliness of their ascetic life. At the end of the performance, the six pianists sit at the piano at the same time, performing an impressive piece that seems to reflect the artist’s attempt to extend the limits of the instrument as much as possible and to break its barriers and limitations. The performance is not only about the ascetic life and lifelong agony of the pianist, but about the corresponding struggle of each artist to confront his instrument or his art and his chimerical goal of
imposing himself on it. It is therefore a short essay on Art and its practitioners

Start time: 21.00
Ticket prices: €12 and €10 (students, unemployed, disabled)
Presale: www.ticketservices.gr and Apollo Theatre