Medea’s gift to the young Glaucus, whom Jason made his wife, was a mantle embroidered with gold, spread out on the marriage bed. It smelled of wild lilies. Glauki proudly put it on and ran to the mirror. A few minutes later, the smile on her face turned into a spasm of pain as a fatal burn ran through her body.

Medea, the queen of Colchis, who betrayed her people for Jason, and then cruelly betrayed by them, rediscovered her nature in jealousy: she became a witch from the land of barbarians. With the help of “kolchiko”, a medicine made from the stamens of wild lilies, she got her revenge.

The high-quality scented candle developed this year by the National Opera, after a successful series of candles inspired by cult opera performances, is called “Medea”. He looks like a queen: gold leaf sparkles when the wick is lit. But it also has a scent that suits Circe’s little niece: wild lilies. Did the potion Medea prepared smell sweet and bitter at the same time, flowers and black pepper, like the fragrance that fills a room when this candle is lit?

“Medea” was one of the most complex fragrances born from the collaboration between ELLS and the Greek company Nardon Cosmetics, precisely because Medea herself is an extremely complex woman – majestic, passionate, but also dark. Concept development began in July and continued for several months.

As Christina Arseni, head of cultural marketing at ELLS, and Vaja Niklica, co-owner of Nardon, explain to us, the creation of each fragrance is a complex task based on the knowledge of the opera on the one hand, on the inspiration and skill of the perfumer on the other hand.

Faust smelled of incense, smoked birch and charcoal, Tosca smelled of rose, powder and flower petals.

Ms. Arseniy gives the first ideas based on the libretto of the opera, which is chosen to be turned into a scented candle, while conveying the feeling and aesthetics of a particular performance. “Our goal is to make the viewer take part of the work with them with the help of smell and packaging,” says Ms. Arseniy. So Othello was packaged in a box of fluorescent paper, reminiscent of director Robert Wilson’s intense lighting. The golden leaves chosen for the fragrant Medea pot are reminiscent of the gates of Jason’s palace in a production that will be shown this spring in Athens directed by David McVicar.

“Then we try to animate the images that Lyriki has given us through smell and turn them into a scented candle,” adds Ms. Niklitsa. It takes several months to compose perfume blends, check the combinations of high, middle and low notes, as they say in perfumery, and finally, efforts to achieve the desired result. An equally important role is played by the wick, which is always cotton and comes in 20 different types, so its choice affects the final product.

We ask them which operas were the most difficult for them. Faust, they recall, eventually smelled of incense, smoked birch, and charcoal—an olfactory metaphor for Dr. Faust’s room where Mephistopheles appeared. Difficult and “Andrea Seigner”, a revolutionary who, along with the ideal of freedom, loved the letters of an unknown woman. The smell of ink and paper has become his most expensive perfume, so high notes of ink were chosen for his scented candle – this is the first sensation of fragrance that we feel even before the wick is lit – middle notes of cotton and low notes, that is, fragrances that appear after the candle burns for an hour, amber and paper.

Feminine and delicate fragrance of Tosca, created from freshly cut roses, powder and flower petals, like the air that she leaves behind when she leaves the chapel where her lover painted. The masculine smell of Don Juan, who, hiding behind a curtain, smoked a cigarette from thin tobacco leaves, watching the girls dance in the lighted hall. Fragrance notes: tobacco, vanilla and tobacco leaves.

As for the gentle “Madama Butterfly”, the command of the love Cho-Cho-Shan was clear. She wanted all the flowers in the garden—violets, roses, peach blossoms—to be cut to decorate the house that would receive Pinkerton. However, the most important mission was the white jasmine.