As a little girl in Athens, Zoe Zeniodi came home from kindergarten, put a videotape in the machine, and watched a woman die on a couch. Then she reenacted the death on her own couch. This was a favorite afternoon activity. It was only much later that she discovered the woman was Violetta, and the video was Verdi’s La traviata. Shades of Wednesday Addams…
Zeniodi eventually became a pianist and then a conductor. She first came to Opera Southwest in 2017 to conduct Pagliacci, with her young twins along for the trip. She returned in 2022 for Robert Xavier Rodríguez’s Frida. She returns now on our symphonic stage with Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ.
Her career has meanwhile taken her to the Philharmonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires, where she is now chief conductor, and to opera houses and orchestras across several continents.
Zeniodi is also artistic director of El Sistema Greece, founded in 2016 during the refugee crisis. Modeled on Venezuela’s celebrated El Sistema, the organization began offering free music lessons to children in refugee camps around Athens.
Refugees are at the center of Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ. Mary, Joseph, and their child have been turned away from every door in Egypt when an Ishmaelite family finally welcomes them. Berlioz gives the household a magnificent choral fugue. The fugue, so often the musical voice of a united Christian community in the great oratorios, is here sung by people who are not Christians at all. But what do they sing? Instructions to wash the strangers’ feet, bring them food, and prepare a bed for the child, giving us the machinery of counterpoint, enlisted in the service of human kindness.
Listen to the Chorus of the Ishmaelites, beginning at 1:30. As beautiful as any chorus from Handel!
Learn more about Zoe Zeniodi here
OSW presents the Symphonic Chorus in Berlioz’ L’Enfance du Christ November 15, 2026 at 2pm
