Exhibition in honor of Renato Mordo, co-founder of the Greek National Opera - Exhibition Opening 11/10/2023

The State Agency for Civic Education of Rhineland-Palatinate, the Association Albert Cohen Corfu, the Cultural Triangle of Prespa, the Banknote Museum of the Ionian Bank – ALPHA BANK and the Ionian University organise the exhibition «Renato Mordo – Jewish, Greek, German, all at once. An artist’s life in the age of extremes» from October 11th until December 9th, 2023 at the Banknote Museum of the Ionian Bank – ALPHA BANK and the Ionian Academy. With this exhibition we honor Renato Mordo, the first director of the Greek National Opera.

The opening of the exhibition will take place on Wednesday, October 11th, 6.30 pm at the Ionian Academy and at 7.30 pm at the Banknote Museum of the Ionian Bank – ALPHA BANK.

The exhibition features milestones about the life of the theatre and opera director Renato Mordo. Renato Mordo, whose parents were of Jewish descent – his father was a merchant from Corfu and his mother was from Austria – was forced to leave Germany at the end of 1932 due to the ever-increasing amti-Semitic hostility and the imminent seizure of power by the National Socialists, and eventually fled to Greece in 1939. In Athens, he co-founded the Greek National Opera and promoted the young opera singer Maria Callas.

Renato Mordo survived the concentration camp in Chaidari and, subsequent to his release he wrote the theatrical play entitled “Chaidari”, in which he recounts the traumatic experiences he suffered in a literary way. After the war, he worked at theaters in Turkey, Austria and Israel and served as opera director in Mainz, the capital of the federal state Rhineland-Palatinate from 1952 to 1955.
The exhibition places particular emphasis on the depiction of the German Occupation of Greece during World War II and addresses its devastating impact on Athens and the entire country, as well as its personal impact on Renato Mordo. Moreover, the exhibition casts a brief glance at World War II through Mordo’s biography.

The curation of the exhibition has been undertaken by the Hellenist Torsten Israel (Mannheim and Athens), while the exhibition was created in collaboration with Uwe Bader (then State Agency for Civic Education of Rhineland-Palatinate) and Marita Hoffman (Llux publishing house, Ludwigshafen upon Rhine). The implementation of the exhibition is also supported by other bodies of the federal state, including the State Parliament of Rhineland-Palatinate. All the translations required for the exhibition from German into Greek were carried out within the framework of cooperation of the Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz (Department of Modern Greek) and the Ionian University in Corfu (Department of Foreign Languages, Translation and Interpreting).

Opening hours of the exhibition
- Banknote Museum of the Ionian Bank – ALPHA BANK: Tuesday until Saturday 8 am – 3 pm
- Ionian Academy: Monday until Friday: 8.30 am – 8 pm Free Entry