The Athens Conservatoire () is the oldest educational institution for the

performing arts The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which involve the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. P ...

in modern

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

. It was founded in 1871 by the

non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

Music and Drama Association.

History

Initially, the musical instruments that were taught there were limited to the

violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

and the

flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

, representative of the ancient Greek Apollonian and

Dionysian The Apollonian and the Dionysian are philosophical and literary concepts represented by a duality between the figures of Apollo and Dionysus from Greek mythology. Its popularization is widely attributed to the work ''The Birth of Tragedy'' by Fri ...

aesthetic principles. Significantly,

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

lessons were not included in the program. In 1881 its new

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

-taught director Georgios Nazos, in a move that was controversial at the time, expanded the conservatoire's program by introducing modern Western European-style instruments and theory material. Among the musicians who have taught at the Athens Conservatoire are Constantine Psachos,

Manolis Kalomiris Manolis Kalomiris (; December 14, 1883, Smyrna – April 3, 1962, Athens) was a Greek classical composer. He was the founder of the Greek National School of Music. Biography Born in Smyrna (modern Izmir, Turkey), he attended school in Constanti ...

, Felix Petyrek,

Elvira de Hidalgo Elvira Juana Rodríguez Roglán (December 28, 1891 – January 21, 1980), known professionally as Elvira de Hidalgo, was a prominent Spanish coloratura soprano, who later became a teacher and vocal coach. Her most famous pupil was Maria ...

. Prominent personalities and artists who were taught at Athens Conservatoire include

Spyridon Samaras Spyridon-Filiskos Samaras () (29 November 1861 - 7 April 1917) was a Greek composer particularly admired for his operas. His compositions were praised worldwide during his lifetime and he is arguably the most important composer of the Ionian Scho ...

(1875–1882),

Maria Callas Maria Callas (born Maria Anna Cecilia Sophia Kalogeropoulos; December 2, 1923 – September 16, 1977) was an American-born Greek soprano and one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century. Many critics praised ...

(1938),

Dimitri Mitropoulos Dimitri Mitropoulos (; – 2 November 1960) was a Greek and American conductor, pianist, and composer. Life and career Mitropoulos was born in Athens, the son of Yannis and Angelikē (Angeliki) Mitropoulos. His father owned a leather goods s ...

(1919),

Nikos Skalkottas Nikos Skalkottas (; 21 March 1904 – 19 September 1949) was a Greek composer of 20th-century classical music. A member of the Second Viennese School, he drew his influences from both the classical repertoire and the Greek tradition. He a ...

(graduated 1920),

Gina Bachauer Gina Bachauer (Greek: Τζίνα Μπαχάουερ; May 21, 1913, AthensAugust 22, 1976, Athens) was a Greek classical pianist who toured extensively in the United States and Europe. Interested in piano at a young age, Bachauer graduated from th ...

(graduated 1929),

Mikis Theodorakis Michail "Mikis" Theodorakis ( ; 29 July 1925 – 2 September 2021) was a Greek composer and lyricist credited with over 1,000 works. He scored for the films '' Zorba the Greek'' (1964), '' Z'' (1969), and '' Serpico'' (1973). He was a three-ti ...

, Dimitris Sgouros, Loukas Karytinos and Foivos. The first

Drama School A drama school, stage school, or theatre school is an undergraduate and/or graduate school or Academic department, department at a college or university, or a free-standing institution (such as the drama section at the Juilliard School) that ...

in Greece was also founded in 1871 on the premises, with many prominent theater personalities were included in its teaching staff, such as:

Aimilios Veakis Aimilios Veakis (; December 13, 1884 – June 29, 1951) was a Greek actor. An active member of the National Liberation Front during the Axis occupation of Greece, he was persecuted for his leftist beliefs during the White Terror. Biography Aim ...

Dimitris Rontiris Dimitris Rontiris (; 1899 – 20 December 1981) was a Greek actor and director. Biography Rontiris was born in Piraeus. He began his education at a military school and left to study law at the University of Athens. He began acting in 1919. ...

, Kostas Mousouris, Dimitris Myrat and others. The institution also runs a Dance School which originated from the establishment of a rhythmic dance school in 1935, which however seized operations a few years after. The school reopened as a fully fledged Dance School in 2011 and in 2018 it gained an official professional accreditation status by the Greek Ministry of Culture.

Building

The Athens Conservatoire is located on Rigillis Street and Vasileos Konstantinou Avenue. The building's facade measures 160 meters the whole building is 13,000 square meters in size. It is an exceptional example of the Bauhaus school and the modern movement in

. Designed by the Greek architect Ioannis Despotopoulos (also known as Jan Despo), the only Greek to have studied under Bauhaus school founder

Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (; 18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-born American architect and founder of the Bauhaus, Bauhaus School, who is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture. He was a founder of ...

, the Conservatoire is the only completed part of an ambitious large-scale cultural complex commissioned in 1959 by the then government for

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

, for which he earned the top architectural prize of its time. The construction begun in 1969 and stopped in 1976, due to a lack of funding, leaving the building unfinished. In 1980, the Greek state undertook the cost of completing the work in exchange for ownership of the conservatory's old headquarters on Pireos Street. Despotopoulos' complete proposal for the Athens Cultural Center involved remodeling the space that stretches from Vasilissis Sofias Avenue to Vasileos Konstantinou Avenue, and from Rigillis Street all the way to the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current di ...

, spanning an area of nearly 150,000 square meters. According to Despotopoulos' archives on file at the Modern Greek Architecture section of the

Benaki Museum The Benaki Museum, established and endowed in 1930 by Antonis Benakis in memory of his father Emmanuel Benakis, is housed in the Benakis family mansion in Athens, Greece. The museum houses Greek works of art from the prehistorical to the modern ...

, in addition to the Athens Conservatoire, his plan foresaw the construction of an 1,800-seat opera house, a circular theatre stage, an extension to the National Gallery, a new Byzantine Museum, a Byzantine-style church, a hotel, a hall for classical dance performances and the state orchestra, a playhouse for experimental theater, underground garages and more. A large part of the underground floors of the building was used to host the

National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens The National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST Εθνικό Μουσείο Σύγχρονης Τέχνης (ΕΜΣΤ)), is a national museum focused on exhibiting contemporary Greek and international art in Athens. It was established in October 200 ...

(EMST), between September 2008 and May 2015. The venue still hosts important events and cultural exhibitions in Athens. Since 2013 the Athens Conservatoire entered a new chapter with a series of renovations and the hosting of important cultural events. In 2016, a particular space, located in the first basement area of the building, was fully refurbished and used for the first time since construction, thanks to a generous donation from NEON Organisation, a cultural non-profit institution founded by the art collector and businessman

Dimitris Daskalopoulos Dimitris Daskalopoulos, (; born 1957, Athens) is a Greek entrepreneur who is known as founder and chairman of DAMMA Holdings SA, a financial services and investment company. He served as the Chairman of the Board of the Hellenic Federation of Ent ...

. The space, since named Polihoros Ω2, is completely transformed into an exhibition space which also contains a small theatre stage and regularly hosts various cultural and artistic events. Between 8 April and 16 July 2017, the Athens Conservatoire was one of the four main partner venues of the

documenta 14 Documenta 14 was the fourteenth edition of the art exhibition documenta which took place in 2017 in both Kassel, Germany, its traditional home, and Athens, Greece. It was held first in Athens from 8 April to 16 July, and in Kassel from 10 Ju ...

international art exhibition which was, for the first time in its history, hosted in Athens along with its main and original location in

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in North Hesse, northern Hesse, in Central Germany (geography), central Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel (region), Kassel and the d ...

, Germany. For the needs of the exhibition, most open public spaces inside and outside the building were dedicated to the artistic events, needs and exhibits of documenta 14. One of the spaces used for this exhibition is the ''Amphitheatre'', situated underground, which is architecturally inspired by the ancient theatres of Greece. The space hosted a sound installation art project by the Nigerian artist

Emeka Ogboh Emeka Ogboh (born May 14, 1977) is a Nigerian sound and installation artist best known for his soundscapes of life in Lagos. Trained as an artist, he began working with sounds that characterize cities following an Egyptian multimedia art progr ...

named ''The Way Earthly Things Are Going'' and was one of the rare occasions where the space has been open to the public. In December 2017 the ''Aris Garoufalis'' Concert Hall, situated on the upper level of the building, was also completely renovated, architecturally and acoustically, thanks to a donation by the ''Friends of Aliki Vatikioti for Music and the Arts'' Foundation. The concert hall now regularly hosts concerts, music competitions, music exams, rehearsals and other cultural events. Since 2020 a much wider in scope publicly funded construction project for the “Renovation and Modernization of the Building Infrastructure of Athens Conservatoire” is well under way and construction is expected to be completed around springtime 2022. In its final form, important new facilities will be added to the current building infrastructure, such as an underground Amphitheatre with a 600-seating capacity, a multi-purpose experimental black-box stage of a 200-seating capacity, spaces for conferences, exhibitions and other events, studio suites for sound technology, as well as a public café-restaurant.

References

External links

Official site
{{authority control Music in Athens Music schools in Greece 1871 establishments in Greece Educational institutions established in 1871