Festival in Greece dedicated to Callas

The music from "Madame Butterfly" and other major operas is known to Greek audiences largely through the recorded performances of Maria Callas, the U.S.-born Greek artist who died in 1977 and is still revered here.

For theatergoers in Athens, watching the tragic story of the young geisha Cio-Cio-San unfold in Puccini's emotionally charged classic has become a familiar favorite at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the stone theater the Romans built at the foot of the Acropolis more than 1,800 years ago.

Late on June 1, it hosted an open-air performance of "Madame Butterfly" to launch Greece's main summer theater and arts festival, dedicated this year to Callas and the century since her birth in Manhattan on Dec. 2, 1923. She died of a heart attack at her home in Paris at age 53.

Officially known as the Athens-Epidaurus Festival, the summer concerts and plays are also held at the ancient theater of Epidaurus, the UNESCO world heritage site in southern Greece. Much of the program was chosen to complement the centenary celebrations.

Ticket sales from June performances by an opera world power couple, French tenor Roberto Alagna and Polish soprano Aleksandra Kurzak, will help fund the planned summer opening of a Callas Museum in central Athens, according to festival artistic director Katerina Evangelatos.

Finally free of constraints imposed by the pandemic, the festival has been expanded this year to include new venues and additional collaboration with overseas artists, festivals and theater companies. Organizers also created a new online platform to help Greek performers seek opportunities abroad.

The lineup this year includes the superstar Chinese pianist Lang Lang, the German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, classical pianist and...