Aspendos International Opera and Ballet Festival

Festival History
While celebrating its 16 th Anniversary, Aspendos International Opera and Ballet Festival makes significant contributions to our country’s international promotion by bringing together the unique historical properties and
 the extraordinary acoustic of 2000 years old Aspendos Antique Theatre with Antalya’s natural beauties and the peaceful nature of art that reaches beyond the boundaries of language, religion and race.

Aspendos International Opera & Ballet Festival, being the only opera and ballet festival of our country, has been the most important organisation of the Directorate General of State Opera and Ballet since 1994, gained an international recognition in 1998, and is nominated among the world’s most famous festivals. The fact of being held at an antique theater like Aspendos, whose history goes back to 166 A.D, gives a distinct meaning to the Aspendos International Opera & Ballet Festival. The audience, among whom % 70 are foreign tourists, has been seeing the performances of our festival every year. With its increasing spectators year by year, Aspendos International Opera & Ballet Festival has become a visual carnival where history, music and a large number of people from several nations come together.

Our Festival, was accepted to EFA-European Festivals Association which is among the most respectful organisations in Europe, on October 24, 2003 and thus has confirmed its distinguished place among other festivals in the world once more. In 2004, as the result of a research done by The Independent, newspaper published in England, Aspendos International Opera & Ballet Festival ranked the 5th among 10 best opera festivals selected from among the renown opera festivals organized all over the world. Furthermore, Aspendos Festival was given place within the first 10 among the Best Festivals of 2005 by the Festspiele Magazine, published in Germany, investigating all the festivals over the world.  

Theatre History
Today, Aspendos ancient city is the city situated on the road turning to the North from 30 km of the Antalya-Mersin Highway near the Village of Belkıs (also used as “Balkız” or “Belkız” in the Anatolian language) in Antalya. Strabon, for this city, says that it was founded by the immigrants coming from Argos under the leadership of the Thracian oracle Mopsos coming to Pamphylia after the Trojan War and that it is a favorable place for shipping. On the coins of the 5th and 4th centry B.C. obtained in the excavations, it is seen that the city was called as Estwedia. On the bilingual (bilinguis) epigraph found in Karatepe, it is read that the AntiqueCity was founded by Asitawandia from ancestry of Mopsos. This indicates that the name of Estwedia was transformed from Asitawandia on the Hittite epigraphs.

Aspendos is the unique center monetizing silver coin in the name of itself outside of Side in the 5th century B.C. and afterwards. The city became the member of the Attica Naval Confederation known as the Delos Confederation. In 469 B.C., the Persian Navy came from the Eurymedon (Köprüçay) River providing transportation opportunity to Aspendos in that time and seized the city and then Alexander the Great came to this place and put an end to the Persian sovereignty in 333 B.C. In the lists of the Ephesos city, Aspendos was written as “Primopolis” in the 5th century A.D. in the Byzantine period. After the Arabian Invasion in the 8th century A.D., the city taken under the dominance of Seljuk Turks and as of the beginning of the 13th century, it was subsequently abandoned. The theater completely restored during the reign of Alaeddin Keykubat I, decorated with elegant ceramics of Seljuk style and used as palace. Aspendos which became a cultural center of the Hellenistic and Roman periods achieved its heyday in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. The remnants for which it is possible to see in this region still today belong to this age. The traces of Aspendos belonging to the age prior to the Roman period could not be found so far today. In the development of the city, gold and silver embroidered tapestries, furniture and sculptures made of lemon tree, salt from LakeKapria in the near surrounding, wine and especially the famous horses of Aspendos are the prior ones among the products exported by the people of Aspendos. Even though they were recognized with grape growing and wine trade, the people of Aspendos not serving wine to their gods in the rituals clarified the reason for this by saying “If wine were only owned by gods, the birds could not dare to eat grapes”.

On the eastern side of Acropolis (the area founded on the top of the city and on which there were located major buildings in ancient Greek and Roman cities), there locates the Aspendos Theatre. In the northern of the theatre, which is the unique sample among its alikes, there is the Stadion (stadium). The initial foundation area of the city, Büyük Tepe, is in the form of a flat platform. Herein, the monumental entrance building with single hall in front of three-naved Bazilika (the Roman building consisting of three halls parallel to each other, wide and high at the center, low and narrow on sides) of which most part is still erecting was built. In the western of Bazilika, as for, there locates Agora (bazaar or meeting area) and Stoa (column gallery covered on the top and open in the front). In the northern of Agora, there is seen Nymphaion (fountain). Today, only the front side of the fountain decorated with rich ornaments can be seen. Only the sitting parts of Bouleuterion (parliament building) located in the northwest of the fountain have been able to reach today. On the flat platform, there are vaulted structures that are considered to be Bath or Gymnasion (the place where the ancient Hellenic people did physical exercise) of which the functions are not known since there was no excavation.


The aquaducts of the city are most interesting ones of the samples belonging to the Roman period. These aquaducts rather protected-well used to distribute the water brought from the hills in the northern of the city throughout the city as pressured via the water balances designed in the form of tower in the near surrounding of Akropolis. In the eastern of Akropolis, as for, there locates Nekropolis (city of deads). In the work of Evliya Çelebi called “Seyahatname”, it is stated that Hz. Süleyman had approximately three thousand mansions and palaces built all around the world for Saba Melikesi Belk?s and declares the locations of the ones defined among them. Moreover, in the book, it is said that the ones known in Anatolia from these mansions and palaces are the Villages of Belk?s residing in Nizip (Gaziantep) and Serik (Antalya). Therefore, AspendosAntiqueCity is called as “Belkis Ruins” today.

ASPENDOS ANCIENT THEATRE

On the door lintel of the theatre (in architecture; upper threshold of the doors and windows), there exist epigraphs in Greek and Latin language. On these epigraphs, we learn that the theatre was built by the Architect Zenon, the son of Theodorus, in the period of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161 – 180) and that it was presented to “the gods of the city and the imperial authority” by the brothers Curtius Chrispinus and Curtius Auspicatus. Aspendos theatre is the most ancient and well-protected sample of the Roman theatres in Anatolia and the best analyzed sample of the Roman theatre architecture in respect to its function as well as being magnificent. Even if nearly the entire theatre was built on vaulted and arched foundations, a small part of it was based upon the eastern side of Acropolis (the area founded on the top of the city and on which there were located major buildings in ancient Hellenistic nad Roman cities). The exterior of the theatre is bonded with conglomerate blocks and the door and window frames are made of cream color limestone.

The sitting lines for the audience (cavea; auditorium; theatron) is built wider than the StageBuilding (skene) and is divided into two by the horizontal passage (diazome dividing the sitting lines of the theatre) . There are forty-one sitting lines in total as twenty of them are in the lower part and twenty-one of them are in the upper part of the diazome. The lower sitting lines are divided into nine sections with ten stairs (kerkides), the upper sitting lines, as for, are divided into twenty sections with twenty-one stairs. The sitting places are made of limestone. The audience reach to the sitting lines through the vaulted entrances on both sides of the stage building. The upper parts of the entrances are arranged in the from of chambers and reserved for the notables. The uppermost sitting line is in the form of column gallery and settled on the partly cradle vaults according to the slope of the hill. The brick repair seen herein belongs to the Seljuk period.

The SkeneBuilding comprises of a skene frons (the front side / front walls of the stage building) and a proskenion (the high platform in front of the stage building on which the players act in the Roman Age). The Skene frons has 5 doors opening to proskene. The major one of these doors situated at the center is called as “porta regia” (the main door opening to the backstage from the frontstage) and the minor ones are called as “porta hospitales” (the side doors opening to the backstage from the frontstage). Skene frons is arranged as duplex with two lines of columns and bays from the interior and the columns has alternately round and triangular frontals. There are sculptures inside the bays of this ornamented side completely covered with marble. The back of the Skene is arranged in the form of lobbies, actor chambers, and stage warehouses. The exterior side is designed as duplicate in conformity with the interior side of the theatre. The uppermost part of the Skene building consists of seventeen Windows and is at the same level with the top of the column-arched gallery in the uppermost line of cavea. The Architect Zenon, thus, converted Aspendos Theatre into a closed space with architectural frames in itself by separating it from the outside world and successfully implemented the integrity of cavea-skene as it is seen in the Roman tradition of theatre. The skene building of the theatre was used and repaired by the Seljuk. The red zigzag ornaments on the white plaster that can be seen on some parts of the side belong to the Seljuk period. The top of the skene building was covered with a rather ornamented wooden roof.

The orchestra (the section on which dances were performed in the Dionysos fests previously and on which the chorus and the players were situated in the Hellenistic theatres of the Classical and Hellenistic period); was designed in the form of semi-circle between the cavea and skene in the form of horseshoe. The acoustic of the theatre was made excellently by providing the cutting-edge calculations of the age. The sound is transmitted to the audience in the most natural way and there is no need to use high-tech (sound-acoustic, electronic) systems in the fests and art events performed in this place. This proves the architectural genius of Zenon.

In the Antique Roman period; Comedia, Tragedia and Atellan (Atellan Farce is a type of play making humorous stories out of the village and small town life and having local propriety) style of plays adopted by the influence of Greek theatre used to be played as well as Farce, Mimus (comedy discussing the bawdy subjects) and Pantomimus (rough lined dance show). The first playwright of these kind of plays is Andronicus. The main plays are Plautus, Terentius and Caecilius focused on Menandros. These plays had influence on the theatre of the Renaissance period. The playwrights such as Moliere, Goldani, Holberg and Kleist wrote Satura, Attelan Farce, Mimus, Pantomimus and Fabula style of plays.