I WANT TO SEE THE POPE! (Sakellaridis) Operetta Athens 2025 Dimitris Sigalos, Vangelis Maniatis, Julia Souglakou, Chrissa Maliamani

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: I WANT TO SEE THE POPE!   
• Composer: Sakellaridis Theophrastos   
• Libretto:  Libretto Text, Libretto Index
• Venue & Opera Company: Greek National Opera, Athens, Greece  
• Recorded: 2025
• Type: Staged Opera Live
• Singers: Dimitris Sigalos, Vangelis Maniatis, Julia Souglakou, Chrissa Maliamani, Nicolas Maraziotis, Marissia Papalexiou, Antonis Kyriakakis, Nicolas Vassiliou
• Conductor: Nicolas Vassiliou  
• Orchestra:
• Stage Director: Natasha Triantafylli  
• Stage Designer: Tina Tzoka  
• Costume Designer: Tina Tzoka  
• Lighting Designer: Christos Tziogkas  

Information about the Recording

• Published by: GNO TV  
• Date Published: 2025  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: yessubs, ensubs  

• ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

  The operetta I Want to See the Pope! (1920), which generated strong reactions upon its initial release, fully explores Theophrastos Sakellaridis’ modern bourgeois themes. The composer also penned the libretto, which is a domestic adaptation of Maurice Hennequin’s farce Les joies du foyer (1894). The plot features a newly married bourgeois couple whose relationship is disrupted during their honeymoon trip to Rome when the young wife expresses the desire to see the Pope up close!

  The work’s style, language, characters, music, and rhythm reveal a captivating stage world where hypocrisy, exaggeration, exhibitionism, and the unquestioned idealization of certain social institutions are sharply satirized. The audience witnesses a wedding, the expectations of the newlyweds and their relatives, and a Pope who—although he never appears—remains the unseen protagonist of the show throughout its duration, serving as a reminder of the fact that confusion, mix-ups, and the pitfalls of established values are often inextricable parts of human desire.

  At some point in 1920, Theophrastos Sakellaridis writes the piece titled I Want to See the Pope!. The First World War has ended. The financial situation is challenging, but there is also a need to escape into pleasure, a need for wild amusement, wealth, and prosperity. New dance schools, cinemas, and cabarets open up in Athens. Anna and Adrianos get married and go on a wedding trip to Rome, in the West. At the same time, however, Greek troops have already started to operate in the East, in Asia Minor. Through singing, we can speak of the most beautiful and worst things. We can dance. Through dancing, we can understand most things. We can choose whom we want to waltz with, whom we want to fox-trot with, and from whom we want to keep a distance, all while keeping the same rhythm. Yet, we get carried away and remain silent and motionless for many minutes, days, or even months.

  Synopsis

  During her honeymoon trip in Italy, Anna, a newlywed bride, expresses the desire to see the Pope up close. When her husband doesn’t meet her wish, their marriage comes on the verge of falling apart. Upon their return to Athens, those close to them blatantly intervene in the couple’s shaken relationship, revealing in a comic-tragic light all the malaises and hypocrisy of the bourgeois class.

   

   

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