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Athens, Dec. 7, 2025 – In a unique kind of “from the heart” evening at the National Theater of Greece, on the main stage of the historic Tsiller Building, Dr. George Dangas stepped into the spotlight not as a surgeon in an operating room, but as a storyteller of the human heart. The distinguished cardiologist—Professor of Medicine and Surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Director of Innovation in Cardiovascular Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York—shared the stage with internationally acclaimed soprano Myrto Papathanasiou, accompanied at the piano by Dimitris Theocharis, for an event that wove together medical science and opera into a single, living lecture.
From the beginning, Dr. Dangas invited the audience to think of the heart not only as a symbol, but as a precious organ whose significance has been recognized across civilizations and centuries. He spoke of how ancient cultures, and particularly the ancient Greeks, struggled to understand the mysterious force that beats in our chest, sustaining life. He reminded the audience many of today’s most familiar medical terms—cardiology, tachycardia, arrhythmia, ischemia—come straight from the Greek language, reflecting a long intellectual lineage that runs from Hippocratic medicine to modern interventional cardiology.
Yet if the language of poets has made the heart the epicenter of love, sorrow, fear, and hope, Dr. Dangas gently shifted the focus to the real, fragile muscle behind the metaphor. Between arias, he spoke about the risks that threaten the heart and the “miracles” of contemporary cardiology: how blocked arteries can be opened, damaged rhythms restored, and failing hearts supported with technologies that would have seemed like science fiction only a generation ago. The first heartbeat and the last, he noted, frame an entire life — and in between are countless beats: regular and irregular, fast and slow, softened by joy or strained by pain.
Soprano Myrto Papathanasiou, a regular guest at major opera houses in New York, Vienna, Berlin, Paris and Munich, anchored the artistic side of the evening. She performed heart-themed works — including “Ah! mio cor!” from Handel’s Alcina, “Nel cuor più non mi sento” from Paisiello’s La Molinara, Bellini’s “Per pietà, bell’idol mio” and Tosti’s “Lasciami! Lascia ch’io respiri” — linking each aria to the emotional and physical strain borne by the heart.
Dangas, a leading interventional cardiologist at Mount Sinai, came to wider attention in the Church world when he led the team of Greek-American physicians—Stamatis Lerakis and George Syros were the other two members—that performed the coronary stent procedure on Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, successfully opening a clogged coronary artery at the end of the Patriarch’s 2021 U.S. visit.
Within the life of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Dangas has been recognized as an Archon of the Order of Saint Andrew, with the offikion Referendarios, reflecting both his professional standing and his service to the Church.
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