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20 years ago, the great German conductor Kurt Masur, while he was the musical director of the French National Orchestra, was naming as head of the orchestra a young lady violinist, of only 21 years old.

Sarah Nemțanu thus became the youngest concert master in the history of the National French Orchestra, a position she still occupies today.

100% French on paper, Sarah bears a Romanian name – Nemțanu – and has a Romanian-beating heart especially when she visits Romania.

“The first time I came to Romania and I heard people speaking Romanian, I thought everyone was my cousin. (laughing) It was like all the family was there, that was my feeling. I felt home.”

Her story is not only one of an accomplished musician, who has conquered the world’s greatest stages, but also a testimony of a universal Europe, in which millions of families break, in need, from their homes and grow roots in other places, that adopt them and give them wings.

Vladimir Nemțanu, born in Bucharest into a Jewish family, was a concert master in the George Enescu Philharmonic, and his wife had just graduated from canto at the Conservatory when they decided to flee communist Romania, that was under Nicolae Ceaușescu’s dictatorship.

They took advantage of The Most Favored Nation Clause, through which Ceaușescu allowed Romanian Jews to emigrate to Israel and The United States of America, and left for Israel themselves.

After a few months spent there, the two young Romanians were getting a chance in France. He got the position of concert master of the Bordeaux National Orchestra and she was hired at the Bordeaux Opera.

“When they got to France, they started a new life. They had nothing, they lived in a hotel for a while, until they rented an apartment. It really was starting from 0.

There were a few Romanians in the Bordeaux orchestra, there already was a cultural connection between Romania and France. And in the ’70’s, a lot of regional orchestras appeared. There were not so many French musicians, so they were completed by Romanian musicians.

Even to this day, the Romanian musicians communities in European orchestras are impressive. But especially in France, because there is this cultural friendship, there have been so many extraordinary Romanian artists who created in France, such as Ionesco, Enescu, Brâncuși.”

“It is the Latin side that binds Romania to France, our atoms intertwine.”

A year and a half after settling in Bordeaux, Sarah was born into the Nemțanu family.

“I’m the oldest of three children and first learned to speak Romanian at home. Then, when I went to school, French became my first language.

But I would say that until about the age of 12, at home I would speak Romanian. Especially when my grandparents were visiting, about a month every year, we would only speak Romanian. Also, my parents’ entourage was formed exclusively of Romanians.”

Although she was fairly young, Sarah vividly recalls her first visit to Romania.

“I went to Romania with my mother and sister when I was six, I have memories, but they are not nice. It was around 1987, my mother already had a French passport, but she was afraid that they wouldn’t let her get back to France, at the airport.

My memory is of my mother crying in panic. She was questioned: why are you married to a Jew? Why are you living in France and not here? I remember all the questions, it was something very violent for me.

Then, I remember it being cold, winter, a lot of snow. The only pleasant memory is riding the sleigh with my grandfather in Bucharest. That was cool!”

She pronounces the word “sleigh” (săniuță) perfectly in Romanian. More so, even though when we started the interview she said that she will be speaking French, because she does not manage speaking Romanian so well, Sarah mostly answers in the language that her parents taught her when she was a child.

As a child, information about Romania was vague, as it would have been for any other child to understand why her parents had to flee their own country.

“I have this memory of being in the car when Ceaușescu was executed, my mother stopped, turned up the volume and stood still. I knew that they had fled Romania because it was not good, but I didn’t understand why.

On the other hand, I was aware that they were happy in France, with a double culture, that they passed on to us, their children.”

Sarah and Deborah, her sister, took on their father’s passion for violin, while their brother became a jurist.

While Sarah leads the National French Orchestra, as a prime violinist, Deborah Nemțanu is, as well, concert master of the National Chamber Orchestra in Paris.

“I implored my father to teach me violin. He was very passionate, he would study a lot, and when we heard him play, we would run to him.

To me, the violin is like a voice. I’m trying to say something through music, through a universal language, without precise words. And people understand what it wants.

I can’t remember wanting to do anything else.

“The most wonderful thing that our father passed on was to be independent, self-critics, knowing on our own whether what we’re doing is right or not, listen to ourselves, without anyone else telling us that we were off-key.”

From 16, Sarah moved by herself in Paris, where she graduated from the Conservatory. And recently she was made a violin teacher at the prestigious school. She enjoys teaching the youth and says that she got this gift and this joy from her father.

She was also a violin teacher for Melanie Laurent, the actress, for the film Le Concert, directed by Radu Mihăileanu.

Sarah Nemțanu is the one playing the music in the film – Tchaikovsky’s concert for violin and orchestra – and had enormous success, along with the film. Le Monde were saying at the time: “Sarah Nemțanu, the true violinist from The Concert”.

“Radu is very precise, he knows exactly what he wants and what I loved was that he made the entire final scene of the film on the timed rhythm of Tchaikovsky’s concert, he first played the music and built the script based on the musicality of the work.

I had never seen that. Usually, in films, they add the music after the shoot.”

As a head of orchestra, she works directly with Christian Măcelaru, the Romanian musical director of the French National Orchestra. He believes her to be one of the finest violinists of the world, who could easily transition to a solo carrier.

But Sarah loves working in an orchestra and can not see herself doing anything else.

“I knew that I wanted to be a concert master. In my mind, I could’t see myself playing alone. My father was a concert master. When I finished school, I loved going to rehearsals when I knew that the orchestra was also there.

My life philosophy is that we all form a chain in which each is a link, we are very different, but only together we can form this chain.

When we will accept that each has his own personality, then everything will be alright. The main priority is the common good, that of the orchestra.

And I love the orchestra, I love the orchestra repertoire, and it shows and my colleagues see it.

I am both head of the orchestra, and part of it, I’m a crossroad that creates connections and this is owed mainly to my education.”

I ask her how many Romanians there are at the moment in the French National Orchestra and she effortlessly answers:

“- Oana, Teodor, Eduard, so 1,2,3,4.

– 3.

– 4, counting me.

– Do you count yourself?

– Of course. (laughs)”

With a Romanian conductor at the helm and a Romanian-born concert master, the French National Orchestra took on an important project, dedicated to the great Romanian composer George Enescu.

The entire work of Enescu will be recorded during the next 10 years at the prestigious record label Deutsche Grammophon.

“In Enescu’s music you can find images from his childhood, birds singing, a violinist playing on the street.

I believe that George Enescu wrote so that he would never forget his memories and did it in the smallest details regarding folklore.

It is, obviously, also classical composing, savant music. But in his music there is always this transparent veil of folklore, which he managed to integrate.

Romania is making all these great efforts to be a European country in all aspects and I believe that the artists are te first that succeed, artists are the first creating connections between countries. Enescu did this perfectly.

In his music there is a lot of freedom, but it is in a special frame, a deeply personal one. This is truly special at Enescu. And that is how I see freedom. We are free on this Earth, but we are also limited on this planet.”

Last year, Sarah Nemțanu opened the International George Enescu Festival, along with the George Enescu Philharmonic, which her father had led, 44 years prior, as a concert master.

And as of this year, Cristian Măcaleru took the helms of the festival as the artistic director. They both wish for a refreshing of the event, but also more attention to young Romanian musicians.

“The Enescu festival is truly impressive. What I find to be a shame is that there is but one such festival in Romania.”

“All the funding goes to one place. I wouldn’t see a single event once every two years and then nothing. And, as we mentioned the youth, if there were larger investments in the system, I would like to see professors from all over Europe teaching in Romania.

Sure, there is the Enescu Contest, but the stakes there are a prize. Who is helping the young artists for the rest of the year, who is teaching them?

At the Enescu Festival I’ve met wonderful young people, volunteers, staff. The youth want to learn, they are fascinated by the European educational system.

Unfortunately, there are many leaving. The best of the youth are leaving Romania.

Here is where I believe that the Enescu Festival with Cristian Măcelaru as an artistic director will bring changes.

It is an enormous hope. It is something I feel.”

Sarah lives in one of the most bohemian neighborhoods in Paris – Montmartre. She walks daily, on her way home, on the wavy streets that were once walked by the great European artists – Monet, Manet, Renoir, Picasso or Van Gogh, and is at home in the vivid atmosphere of the place filled with tourists, right next to the Sacre Coeur Cathedral.

She is the mother of two, a wife and an artist who enjoys live through everything she does. She loves cooking, jogging with her husband and traveling. She lives a typical Parisian life, but equally loves each of her trips to Romania, which she sees as a fundamental part of her identity.

“I’ve went to Romania each of the last 6 years and every time I felt like home. It is something that cannot be explained, can only be felt.

I feel like home, I even took Georges there, my son.

Romania is at a European crossroad, it is a unique country through the fact that it is Latin in the east, and this gives it a special identity and in the same time it is a country of adaptability.

That is why I think many artists leave the country and are very evolved culturally.

And if we were to mention musical particularities, I think that the Romanian style has a certain elegance, something that my father absorbed and passed on.”

Sarah Nemțanu is the result of a family of Romanian migrants in France, in the same way as thousands of children are born in Romanian families overseas, and take on different paths than what their lives would have been, would their parents have stayed in Romania.

Art, in this case, has fundamentally contributed to the conservation of a cultural identity that Romanians carried along in their adoptive countries.

In a world where foul history repeats itself and millions of families are forced to flee from war or dictatorial regimes, Sarah is a believer in the good in everyone, and the power to bring a little light around us, be it through art, or through simple gestures.

“I believe that when you do good and are positive, there is an effect around you. For example, I have some friends that are constantly complaining about Paris taxi drivers, that they’re bad, this and that. I often take a taxi after concerts and I only meet wonderful taxi drivers, really nice.

Once I had a taxi driver that had came to see me at a concert. He was 50 years old and he listened to classical music on the radio, he had just enrolled in music school, to learn an instrument. I invited him to a concert, he came, waited for me at the end and cried.

To me, this is real life. If you do good, keep a positive attitude and don’t let all the negativity in the world influence you, than everything will be better.

***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.

The post Sarah Nemțanu, outstanding French violinist, born from Romanian parents: “To me, the violin is like a voice. “ appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

Versiune în ROMÂNĂ

“I, for one, did not have access to professional theatre, I had access to world theatre. The circus would come to town and I would be fascinated by the fair, the clowns, by film, by countryside traditions, weddings, christenings, which for me were a kind of performance.

I believe that’s how I fell in love with theatre.”

In the heart of beautiful Bucovina, which he now calls “the centre of his world”, a teenager was discovering the charm of art as a means of spiritual salvation during the communist regime.

He would spend days on end at the cinema and library in Rădăuți and discover that the universe can be completely different from Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Romania.

The books of Sartre, Camus or Proust brought him closer to the French language and culture, but ultimately, the writings of Caragiale and Beckett were the revelations that would change the course his entire life.

“When I first read Beckett, I was astonished by the novelty of how he put the literary text on the page. That is when I realised that play writing is a different kind of literature, not in the form of poetry or prose, but rather in the form of lines. And I absolutely loved it.”

After reading plays, he started yearning to see them on stage. And since there were no theatres in Rădăuți, he got on a train and stopped where he knew he would find what he was looking for.

“When I was in high school, I ran away from home to go to the theatre in Bucharest. Every holiday after that, I would go to the theatre in Bucharest. I would go on my own and stay at one of my classmates’ grandmother.”

Today Matei Vișniec is one of the world’s leading playwrights, and his plays are performed in dozens of countries at the biggest festivals.

Last year the President of France awarded him the title of Knight of the National Order of Merit, and in 2018 the French Ministry of Culture awarded him the title of Knight of Arts and Letters.

He often says that Romania has given him roots, while France has given him wings. And his wings started growing in 1987, when he first set foot in Paris’ Gare de l’Est.  

“My dad came to Bucharest and put me on a train. I didn’t think I would manage to cross the border. I could hardly believe this dream of mine was coming true.

I only had enough money to get to Vienna by train. I was allowed to exchange 100 dollars and bought a ticket to Vienna. There, two former colleagues of mine helped me get to Paris.”

His lucky departure came after an invitation that he received from a European intellectual aid foundation, which also offered him a scholarship of 5,000 francs for a month in the French capital.

He was also lucky enough to receive his visa at a time when Romania was at risk of losing the Most Favoured Nation clause from the US, which is why the communist regime gave many intellectuals the right to leave in order to prove to the Americans that the Romanians were free.

“Once I arrived in Paris, the first place I went to was Radio Free Europe, where the leading figures of the Romanian exile were – Monica Lovinescu, Virgil Ierunca, Paul Goma. A few days later, I applied for political asylum.”

In Paris, he came across a Romanian diaspora made up solely of intellectuals. He was offered a place in a migrant dorm where he had to share a room with 8 other people, and he was a happy man.

“I had a scholarship of 5,000 francs and couldn’t keep the money at the dorm. Virgil Ierunca kept them for me at his place. We would meet once a week and he would give me 100-200 francs.

I had my morning and my evening meals provided, I also a bed, a desk, but we had to leave the hostel at 8:30 in the morning to go looking for work. We were only allowed to come back after 18:30.

I felt great there, I would go out on the Esplanade des Invalides and feel like a king. I would go straight to the library and spend the entire day reading, at lunch time I would go down and grab a sandwich for a couple of francs, and then I would head back to the library.

I had access to books, newspapers, films, music, it was fabulous. I spent all day long there.”

Within a few days, another Romanian introduced him to the daughter of Eugène Ionesco, Marie-France Ionesco, and this is how he came to step inside the Ionesco household.

“When I set foot in Eugen Ionesco’s house, I felt as if I were in a temple. I kept looking at the books, the furniture, the chairs in there.”

Marie-France Ionesco gifted him with invitations to the performances of The Bald Soprano and The Chairs. That was the first time that the young Vișniec saw Ionesco’s plays.  

“I was astounded. It was a kind of bourgeois theatre, but with a text which shone through its lack of conventionality.”

He did not meet the great playwright because he was in Switzerland at the time. Instead, he went to a conference held by Emil Cioran.

“I did meet Cioran, but I did not insist on getting close to him, he was already quite old. And these people had already given me so many extraordinary things that I could not longer ask anything else from them.”

After all, Vișniec had his own way to go. He started with the plays he had already written in Romania, but which he had not dared to bring along for fear that they would be confiscated.

“I asked my dad to send the plays as letters, about 5 pages per letter. They would begin with “Dear Matei” and then continue with my own texts. I received a lot of plays this way, by mail.”

He began translating them into French and some French friends helped proofread them. Then, the first play he wrote in French ended up in the hands of some French actors, thus paving the way to small, independent theatres in Paris. Those were the first to understand, appreciate and stage his plays.

In the meantime, he also received two job offers – one from Radio Free Europe Munich and one from BBC London. And he was curious to see what British theatre was like. In 1988, he set off to the United Kingdom as a journalist, reporting on international news and what was happening in Romania under Ceușescu’s abusive regime. As he did not want to run into problems with the Securitate (Secret police), he published his texts under the pseudonym Andrei Sireteanu

“Ceaușescu had turned into a total madman and the international press was writing a lot about him.”  

He had a 4-year contract with the BBC, but left after less than a year, as he could not find his place as a playwright in England.

“My plays were more avant-garde, more fantastic, more absurd, they were different from the realist theatre that appeals to the English. I was perceived as an alien. So I thought that that was not the best country for me. Within 6 months I realised that my chances were simply not there.

England is a country that has evolved outside of the European avant-garde, it is an island in all possible ways. With an extraordinary theatre, but I felt better in Paris.”

He returned to Paris in October 1989 and started a PhD. In December of the same year, Romania’s communist regime fell, and Matei Vișniec was no longer a political refugee, but a free man.

He received an offer to return to Romania as director of the State Theatre in Constanta. However, he knew that his plays had already found their place in France.

“Something fabulous happened. In 1991, my plays started being performed at the Avignon Theatre Festival. I would have 2-3 plays, 5-6 performances there.”

For thirty years he continued to write plays in French, and poems and novels in Romanian.

“The French language helped me write plays and short prose, because I wrote more shortly, more concisely, with fewer words, but many effects.”

For the past 25 years, many of his writings have seen the light of day at the Contrescarpe Café, where he spends every one of his mornings. Located in an intimate square in a central area of Paris, near his house, the typically Parisian café offers him peace and inspiration. In fact, that is also the place where he arranged for us to meet.

“When I came to Paris, I would often go to the Sorbonne Library and then wander the streets. This is how I stumbled upon this square. I would buy a cup of coffe for 1.50 francs and sit here and read.

As it happened, when my daughter was born 25 years ago I moved to this neighborhood. I feel good here because I also see the ghosts of the writers who were here before.

This is where Hemingway lived, this is where he wrote his first novel. There was also a cabaret in his area that he probably went to quite often. All of the taverns that you see here were probably frequented by Hemingway.

The novel I am about to publish has been written here. It is called A Century of Fog and is about 800 pages long.

Vague Theatre was written here too. Others as well. I don’t get disturbed by the people sitting here, quite the contrary. And when I leave the café at about 12:30, I see the students who come here to grab a sandwich, which reminds me of the times when I was a student myself.”

Hemingway’s home is just a few steps away from the café. A few buildings farther, it is followed by the place where the philosopher René Descartes lived. Vișniec then shows us the house from which the French-Romanian philosopher Benjamin Fondane was picked up by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz, the concentration camp where he was gassed to death.

It is an entire universe fraught with history, one which Matei Visniec has left his own mark on as well. In the same neighborhood, he also shows us Jardin des Plantes, a botanical garden where he has found inspiration too.

“Let me show you my rats!”

In a pen we see a few kangaroo rats, a rare species that is neither rat nor kangaroo, but looks similar to both. The unique feature of this species is that they are only animals that can survive without drinking water.  

“They are the most bizarre animals, yet they can provide fabulous moments of tenderness between mother and baby. Einstein used to say that if rats weighed 30 kilograms, they could rule the world. Well, look, here are the 30-kilo rats.”

This is how rats started cropping up in Matei Vișniec’s writings – “The King, The Rat and the King’s Fool”, “The Rat King”, but most of all, “The Preventive Disorder”, which examine human value in relation with rat value.

Since 2016, a new theatre founded in Suceava by the local municipality bears the name of Matei Vișniec. The playwright comes to Romania on a regular basis in order to visit his family, participate in the Sibiu Theatre Festival or hold conferences.

Unfortunately, his visits to Romania do not always bring him joy. One of his sorrows is that many libraries throughout the country have been closed or rendered destitute. Even the library in Rădăuți, the one which brought him closer to culture, was recently in the midst of an unfortunate situation in which the local authorities decided to cut down on the budget allocated to this cultural institution.

“It is a shame that the Library of Rădăuți was richer and more accessible to the public during the communist regime. It was located in the city centre, now it is upstairs, so you have to go look for it, because its place on the ground floor was taken by a shop.

Libraries shouldn’t be left in the lurch, but rather reimagined, reorganised, and the librarians should be prepared for a new strategy meant to attract readers.  

In France, for example, there has been a festival called “Let’s read out lout” for 20 years now, and every year, about 20.000 people participate voluntarily. What do they do? They visit schools and other institutions and read out lout, which is a completely different experience from simply telling a child that they should read. A miracle occurs. This is just one example of how you can pull children away from their mobile phones.

Libraries should also become a place to socialise. Not to mention that in France, they are no longer called bibliothèques, but rather mediathèques, because they offer films, music and other activities.

If you educate a child only through images, the mechanisms for concept-making and concept-based reflection disappear. When you read a story, you imagine whatever you want.

If 2 million children watch Snow White, a film produced by Hollywood, 2 million children will have the same picture of Snow White.

If 2 million children read Snow White, there will be 2 million different perspectives on it. That is the difference between letting oneself be indoctrinated by Hollywood as opposed to reading and letting one’s mind wander.”

France continues to be a model of a society that breathes culture as well as a country which is “generous to foreigners”, as the Romanian playwright describes it. Now, for the first time in history, the Avignon Theatre Festival has a foreign director – a Portuguese.

In Romania, not only are no foreign directors invited, but the Romanian ones sometimes remain in office for 20 years, so there is little chance of reconstruction at the moment.

“Here this happens only if a director builds his own theatre, financed with public resources, but they can stay in office for life if they are the ones to have laid the foundations.

By comparison, national theatres change their directors constantly, once every four years or with the possibility of extension for another four years. The way I see it, the great tragedy for Romanian theatre is not that a person remains in office for years on end.

The real drama is that new theatres, independent theatres funded by public money are not being created.

Small halls, with 100 seats, offer the most wonderful opportunities to launch new authors. My plays were only performed in small theatres at first. In a big hall, the investment is bigger. Until they decide to stage something, the directors ask themselves dozens of times if they will be successful or not and schedule your play in 3 years.

Whereas in small theatres there is tremendous mobility. You meet a director today, you give him a piece of writing, he likes it, and two months later he has staged it.

There should be a law to subsidise private artistic initiatives and also a sponsorship law, so that these people can get money from companies.”

Having left his home country 34 years ago, Matei Vișniec is now a French citizen but has also remained a Romanian one. Through his texts, however, he is universal.

He dreams of a EU plan that can save the millions of Romanians working abroad “in humiliating conditions” and provide them with the chance to return home and find work.

In his book “Cabaret of Words”, he speaks remarkably about the meaning of the word return.

“When I go on a journey, I take a single word with me in my suitcase: the word return.  

When I see you leave, I slip a single word into your coat pocket: the word return. (…)

When you return and tell me “I have returned”, it is not you I kiss right away. Before you, I kiss the word return.

When I am asked “But do you sometimes return to see your parents?”, I say “yes, that is the only place where the word return grows” (…)

When I die, I will give my soul in exchange for one single word: the word return.”

***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.

The post Matei Vișniec, the Romanian knight of French theatre appeared first on Cultura la dubă.