The name Gigi Căciuleanu is synonymous with contemporary dance, both in Romania and worldwide. Alongside his teacher, Miriam Răducanu, he built forms of expression through movement at a time when Romanians lacked freedom. He then amazed huge names in dance, such as the Soviet ballerina Maya Plisetskaya and the German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch.

He founded the first National Center for Contemporary Dance in France in Rennes and led the Santiago de Chile National Ballet.

He has lived in Paris for 50 years but has also left his mark on contemporary dance in Romania, both before and after the Revolution.

I met him in the French capital, in the Montmartre district where he lives, and I discovered fascinating stories, from his departure from Romania and periods of financial insecurity, where he ate only jam on dry bread for three months, to career-defining encounters with Pierre Cardin, Astor Piazzolla, Jean Michel Jarre, and Maya Plisetskaya.

***

In June 1940, when Romania was ordered to cede Bessarabia as a result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Gigi Căciuleanu’s grandparents and parents caught the last train to Bucharest.

“My grandmother didn’t take any jewelry, nothing; she only took the Bible and a cactus. If I were to write all my memoirs, I would title it The Bible and the Cactus. She had the Bible since 1900; she would read from it when we were children and she cherished it very much. The way my grandmother read to us made the Bible seem like an adventure book.

We all lived in the basement of a house on Eremia Grigorescu Street, and I was lucky to grow up between the two gardens, Icoanei and Ioanid. In my day, Ioanid was called Pușkin Park. We used to swim in the pond there.”

Gigi Căciuleanu first came into contact with dance when he was only 4 years old. It happened at a ballet school on Frumoasă Street in Bucharest, near George Enescu’s house.

“If you were to look through the keyhole into Alice’s Wonderland, you would see something. You know it’s Wonderland, but you don’t know exactly what it’s like. Dance is not just dance; it’s a necessity. It’s a visceral necessity, just as poetry is a necessity. And for me, poetry and dance and drawing lines are very connected.

My mother took me to ballet for two reasons: one – I was terribly mischievous, and two – my mother would have wanted to be a ballerina, but it was not considered appropriate at the time in our family for a girl to be a ballerina; ballerinas were considered unserious. Unable to be a ballerina, my mother became a botanist. She was very in love with plants. A plant is a dance. It is a line that develops, blooms, has a story. A blade of grass also has extraordinary strength; it comes out of the asphalt without any problem. Put me under the asphalt to see if I can get out. No! I don’t know how the blade of grass makes its way through.

Dance fascinated me in the sense that it hit me on the head; I was very scared because there were all kinds of young ladies who knew much more than I did. I was 4 years old; what does a child know at 4? I started to cry, and a blond, beautiful, very intelligent teacher, Nuți Dona, took me in her arms, and I asked her to marry me. Haha. Then she started training me.

She said: ‘Forget the figures and look: I’m here with you, you’re in an empty lot, you’re playing with a ball, you break a window, the neighbor whose window you broke comes out and scolds you, you answer him, and you are between the ball and the one who scolds you. You dance however you want.’ I don’t know what I danced for her, but I really liked the idea. That was freedom.”

He then continued to go to the dance school, and the meeting that was to decisively mark his artistic path was with the dancer and choreographer Miriam Răducanu.

“Miriam became our teacher when I entered the second cycle, which means at 14 years old. And suddenly, some subjects were added, one of which was called The Actor’s Art. I really liked it; at one point, I wanted to quit dance and become an actor, I realized I could do more things as an actor, and I really liked the idea.

She gave us dance classes, but it was not allowed to say “modern dance”; jazz was frowned upon as modern music. She told us: ‘Look, you are allowed to improvise, but not chaotically, but with some very precise tasks, just like jazz musicians do, she already pronounced the word jazz, which was taboo. Or like very talented musicians do in a Mozart symphony; they have a moment of freedom where they deviate from the written symphony and are allowed to add some nuances that are their own. I want to work on these nuances with you, in which you have the right to be free, but going through the experience of improvising with some very precise tasks.’

With Miriam, I realized that dance and the art of acting do not exclude each other but blend very well. She was the first dance-actor I met.

Together, the two created the famous late-night shows, which took place at the Țăndărică Theater in Bucharest in the late ’60s. The Nocturnes combined music, dance, poetry, and acting, and the interdisciplinary construction was something revolutionary at the time.

“She worked a lot with the theater, with Gina Patrichi, with Virgil Ogășanu. Virgil Ogășanu was part of the first Nocturne we did. He performed a monologue from Gogol’s The Government Inspector, which he had worked on with Andrei Șerban.

Many of the dances I did with Miriam came out of improvisation. Before the Nocturnes, we danced a lot in people’s homes. Whoever had a bigger living room would welcome us. People would sit on chairs as if at a theater.

How was this freedom possible in that regime where Romanians lacked precisely freedom?

“Romanians are Romanians; jokes saved us. Don’t forget that we are in a country of jokes, even if some people would turn you in for this. We always laughed at many things, and Romanians have always been very Latin. No matter how much they try to restrain us, we remain Latin.

Inspired by Brâncuși, Miriam had at one point created a dance called Flight; it was very static, only on an oscillation, the body only had some inclinations. And she was criticized by her colleagues at the opera, who said, ‘What kind of flight is that; in flight, you flap your arms.’ And I went to her and said: ‘Madam, you should know that I am very upset by what people are saying about your dance.’

And she told me: ‘You ask them where the feathers are on Brâncuși’s Bird. Don’t argue with them; just present artistic arguments.’ Miriam is very different from me. Miriam polished her dances, just as Brâncuși polished his sculptures. And I was very much about the immediate moment; I could change a dance in three seconds. During the Nocturnes, I always said that she was the pretzel, and I was dancing, sneaking through the holes of the pretzel.”

When the Nocturnes, theater plays, concerts, and opera shows ended, young people from Bucharest who were interested in the courageous side of art would gather at Preoteasa, the Students’ Cultural Center. There, great Romanian artists would give free rein to their imagination and improvise in a captivating way for the audience.

“We improvised crazily; all kinds of jazz musicians would come, the Berindei brothers, Jancy Korossy, Johnny Raducanu. It was a dialogue where I didn’t care about the way they played and what that was called in music, and they didn’t care what the movement we were doing was called. The audience would come like crazy for this. A lot of young people would come,” Gigi Căciuleanu now recalls.

Alongside Miriam Răducanu, Gigi Căciuleanu participated in the first international festivals. When the Bulandra Theater, with Liviu Ciulei as director, presented Hamlet at the Edinburgh Festival, Gigi Căciuleanu was dancing in the festival’s underground: “one day, we saw Marin Sorescu and Ion Caramitru come in and join us, in a good way, and they created a moment within our show. It was spontaneous and fit perfectly.”

Poetry, painting, and dance have always had echoes in Gigi Căciuleanu’s dance. He fell in love with the paintings of Kandinsky and Aivazovsky, which gave him the courage not to impose barriers on himself, to build forms in continuous motion, without a contour.

“What is choreography? It is a combination of movements that you invent. You invent the movements and their combination. I make a big distinction between a choreographer and an arranger. It’s like in music; there are people who invent things and others who arrange them. A lot of choreographers call themselves choreographers without being choreographers. They take things from here and there and glue them together.”

Gigi Căciuleanu left Romania in 1973 and settled in France, after a journey through Russia, Germany, Greece, and Belgium, refusing an invitation to move to America.

His meeting with the great German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch gave him the confidence that he could start over in a new world.

“After leaving the country so many times with Miriam, I told myself I couldn’t wait for visas for who knows how long. I was convinced I had something to say, and I couldn’t say it at the opera, where I had to do what I was told. I didn’t want to go to Moscow, but Miriam told me, ‘Go, boy, to the Russians, and learn the trade!'”

And did you go to the Bolshoi Theater?

“Yes, I stayed for one season, but that was enough for me; it was an extraordinary technical apprenticeship. It was classical, academic dance, but with more freedom. I had three extraordinary teachers; if a double jump was done, we would do a triple. I absolutely loved this technical challenge. And we had the opportunity to sneak in to the soloists, we would open the door and slip in. Maya Plisetskaya, Ekaterina Maximova, Vladimir Vasiliev were there; you couldn’t even touch them.”

He was not interested in staying in Moscow and continued to see the world through international competitions, along with his dance partner, Ruxandra Racoviță.

“We won the only contemporary choreography competition in Germany at that time. I won once, I returned to Romania, and Ruxandra told me: ‘Căciu, let’s do another competition, so we can get out again, so the world can see us.’

And we did a Romanian Bolero, the two of us with a third acting character, Dan Mastacan, who had some acting passages, and Raluca Ianegic, who presented a kind of flamenco, a symbol of death, as I was reading a lot of Lorca at the time. That dance piece won first prize a second time. It had never happened before that the same people would win in a competition two years in a row.

Pina Bausch had been the laureate of the same competition a few years earlier. I said that if I won the prize a second time, I would stay there. Dan Mastacan left for Paris immediately and had an extraordinary career in the world of film.

I stayed in Germany because Pina invited me to join her company. She was the director of the Essen School of Arts. She proposed that I work on choreographies with the people she had, her students, some of whom would later become very well known. Susanne Linke was there.

I had the extraordinary chance to work with those people; I created ten pieces with them. And those productions went on tour. Pina combined them with her pieces and my pieces. So I had moments when I wasn’t dancing and I would watch what she was doing, and she did the same.

That’s when I saw what a great dancer Pina was, and every time I went and said: ‘Pina, you are a divine dancer,’ even though she was like an animal, a combination of Salvador Dalí’s dinosaur and a giraffe in flames.

In the meantime, I convinced Ruxandra to return to Germany, and we left with her for Greece. We bought two boat tickets, without having anything to eat.”

The projects in Greece did not materialize, so Ruxandra Racoviță returned to Romania, but Gigi stayed for another 3 months in Greece, on the island of Hydra near Athens, where a Romanian woman they had met owned a house.

“In 40-degree heat, I ate nothing but dry biscotte with orange marmalade for three months, which Mrs. Ralu Manu had in the house, as she was on vacation. I literally exterminated that cupboard of biscotte—some slices of dry bread. And I would spread a little marmalade on it to make it last. Since then, I can’t stand to see biscotte; I can’t…”

He finally managed to get to Paris, a city that continues to captivate him today, after 50 years.

“When I arrived in Paris in June-July, the last thing on my mind was America. I even slept on benches by the Seine many times; it was possible back then, it’s not like now. Dan Mastacan had left to make a film in Germany, and I had nowhere to stay. But I said that I wasn’t leaving here.”

Now he met us in the Montmartre district, near the Sacre Coeur church, where he lives. He is 78 years old, and dance, cats, and poetry are now his main interests. He perfectly remembers the adventure of settling in France, without any source of income, trying to work at a cabaret while having just requested political asylum.

Ruxandra Racoviță joined him in this madness, and the great American ballerina Rosella Hightower, director of the Nancy Theater, gave them a chance: “she told us she had only one position for a dancer, but she would cut it in half, and we would split the salary. That’s how we got to Nancy, where later, she gave me the direction of the ballet there. Dan Mastacan was my assistant. And Ruxandra was a star dancer.

I stayed there for 5 years. From that company of 30 people, I selected 10 with whom I worked at night, and we then went on tour through France. Unpaid, that’s what we wanted. That’s how the French Ministry of Culture got to know us. And, at one point, I said, ‘God, I really want to do only this; I’m not interested in doing those ballets anymore, which, in fact, I didn’t even know how to do.’

The Ministry of Culture offered me Rennes or Montpellier. I wanted Rennes because it’s closer to Paris. I always gravitate towards Paris. I love Paris, no matter what it’s like. I got to Rennes and stayed there for 15 years. That’s where I founded the first National Center for Contemporary Dance.”

Through the actor Dan Mastacan, who had become the assistant to the famous designer and cultural figure Pierre Cardin, Gigi Căciuleanu received a proposal from Cardin to go on a world tour.

“I was on tour with a show in London, and Pierre Cardin came into the theater and saw me. He said he wanted me. I came by bus and showed Pierre Cardin what we were working on clandestinely at night in Nancy, and he said: ‘I’ll take you with this show.’ And that’s how he gave us tours all over the world: Japan, China, the United States, and a lot in South America.”

Pierre Cardin also connected him with one of the greatest Soviet ballerinas in history, Maya Plisetskaya, whom the young Gigi had only secretly watched at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.

“Pierre Cardin calls me and says: ‘Don’t you want to meet Maya Plisetskaya? I’d like to introduce you to her and have her see you dance.’ And I said, ‘Of course, I’ll take the train immediately.’ I go, I arrive at the theater in Paris, and I dance to Ray Charles’s music. Maya likes it very much; she even wrote in her diary ‘I met a brilliant Romanian.’ She says: ‘Don’t you want to teach me some movements?’ I say: ‘Madam, these movements are not learned in three seconds behind a door.’

Years passed since then, and Pierre Cardin called me again: ‘I absolutely want to make a gift show for Maya, and I thought of you.’ Among the proposed titles, I chose The Madwoman of Chaillot; it seemed to fit my personality and hers the most. We were going to put on the show at his theater, Espace Cardin, in the heart of Paris; for me, it was a huge deal. And I said, ‘But how?’ And he said: ‘Maya will come to Rennes, and you will work there.’ And Maya came.

I was late at the station. Rennes is towards the ocean, 80 km from the ocean, so there were many seagulls.

I arrive at the station, the platforms were empty, like in the paintings of Delvaux (n.r. Belgian surrealist painter Paul Delvaux), who drew stations with traffic lights, where there are some naked ladies.

‘Maya, please forgive me, I had rehearsals, let me help you with your luggage.’ She was silent, nothing, she just stood there with her braids in the wind. Then she says: ‘I know how it is. But please show me the movements you have thought of for me.’

And the improvisation starts again, of course. You come huffing and puffing, sweating, because it’s the huge star right there and you’re late? And I start outlining it for her on that platform; I had absolutely nothing prepared, but, anyway, I had Miriam Răducanu’s training. I put on the tape with The Madwoman of Chaillot and danced for her. She didn’t say a word. She let me go through hell on that platform, I stopped at one point because I couldn’t go on, and she says: ‘Yes, I liked it. But I have one single request. Don’t you dare do it any other way than how you did it here.’

Were you able to reproduce it then?

“The hell I was! No, but it didn’t even matter anymore. She didn’t want to see what I had. She wanted to see that my joints would hold up, because otherwise, she could have gotten on the next train and left.

We did the show at the Bolshoi, we did it in Japan. When we arrived at the Bolshoi, it was exactly the day the Russian White House was burning; the government building was on fire, everything was closing on the streets at 9, and Yeltsin gave an extraordinary dispensation so that Maya’s show could be performed at 4.”

In 1993, he founded the Gigi Căciuleanu company in Paris, with Dan Mastacan and Ruxandra Racoviță. At the same time, he returned to Romanian soil as a guest and contributed to the growth of new generations of Romanian dancers.

“Vava Ștefănescu, Răzvan Mazilu, Ștefan Lupu, Arcadie Rusu, Ioana Marchidan, Lari Georgescu – they all were part of my company, and now they are all something.

First and foremost, I taught them that they had to be themselves. That no matter how strict the choreography is, and I work very strictly on choreography, the choreographies are written precisely so that from this writing you can burst out when you want to. But you must have a thought-out foundation. Take a Mozart symphony. Yehudi Menuhin’s genius is not seen because he is interpreting something else, but because he plays it the way he plays it. To be free to be who you are—that is the great art.

To be ‘authentic,’ I was even called ‘Mr. Authentic,’ because I used the word often.

The choreography of the sea is written. There are physical laws. You don’t play with them. But look at the sea; you can stand all day long and you don’t get tired of looking at it. Or the fire in the fireplace. And yet, there are very clear physical laws that direct those things. That would be choreography.

What does Romania mean to you?

I don’t make a distinction between Romania and France. If I stayed in Paris, it’s because it looked a lot like Romania. It seemed to me that I had come home.

But what were the similarities?

There is a certain freedom of thought. There were also our connections with France, Cioran, Ionesco, Enescu. And it seemed like a terribly natural connection, and I spoke French from a very young age.

Romanians are very French, in fact, and the French are very Romanian. There are differences because we had different destinies.”

This article is part of the “France Week” series, an initiative by Cultura la dubă supported by BNP Paribas. So far, within this project, Cultura la dubă has presented the stories of 22 Romanian artists and cultural figures based in France.

The post Gigi Căciuleanu, a life dedicated to dance: “Dance is not just dance. It’s a visceral necessity.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

Who would have thought that 35 years after the fall of communism, Romanians would still be seeking healing? Cornelia Oncioiu is part of a generation of children raised in Romanian working-class families who, hardened by the shortages and horrors of the communist regime, didn’t know that the affection they showed their own children could matter more than what they put on the table.

Born in the commune of Dărmănești in Bacău County, at her mother’s insistence, she moved to Cluj when she was only 13 years old.

Today, she is one of the voices of the Paris National Opera, and her professional life is divided between the Opera Garnier and the Opéra Bastille, the performance halls that any artist or opera lover dreams of. She has shared the stage with international stars such as German soprano Diana Damrau and French baritone Ludovic Tézier and has worked with important directors like Robert Wilson and Andrei Șerban.

But her story is not that of a diva. Having lived in the French capital for over 20 years, mezzo-soprano Cornelia Oncioiu’s success is an example of courage, perseverance, and healing through music.

***

We met Cornelia Oncioiu right next to the Opera Garnier in Paris. I immediately noticed her Transylvanian accent, but she told us she was actually born in Bacău. Destiny led her to Transylvania, the Banat region, and then to France, so her Romanian has no trace of a Moldovan accent.

“I lived with my parents until I was 13, and when I was 13, my mother said: you’re moving to Cluj! We had some relatives there, and there was a family wedding. Since she couldn’t leave, she said I should. I didn’t want to go, I cried, I hated the idea. But many times, life has shown me that even if I didn’t want something, it happened so that I would get to where I was meant to be.

Do you believe in destiny, that a certain path is written for you?

Yes, I clearly do, because I have lived it, I have seen it happen so many times.

“After I finished 8th grade, I enrolled in the Mining, Oil, and Geology section at the Racoviță High School in Cluj. And it so happened that I met a classmate who was enrolled at the Cluj School of Popular Arts. We both loved to sing, and she told me I could enroll too.

I went with my uncle to register, and the date of the exam fell exactly when I was sick; I had a throat infection. I was treating myself with walnut shell tea and onion tea.

At that time, I sang pop music; I didn’t sing classical music at all, I didn’t know what it was all about. I had no musical knowledge. In Dărmănești, I had an extraordinary teacher with whom I did four years of kobza. And he also played the violin fantastically; you can imagine what it means to have a teacher who plays the violin in Dărmănești, a very small commune! But I never even thought I could have a career in music. I never even dreamed of it. I didn’t know what talent was. I just liked to sing. That’s all.

At the exam for the School of Popular Arts, I sang ‘Nu-mi lua iubirea dacă pleci’ (Don’t Take My Love If You Leave), as I was a big fan of Angela Similea. I sang the first verse and the chorus, and the teacher said, ‘Thank you, that’s enough.’

Of course, I was inhibited; I thought I must have disappointed him, that he didn’t like it, that he wouldn’t take me. And then I experienced one of the most exceptional moments of my life. There was such a great silence that it seemed to last an eternity. And then he said: ‘A voice like that, you hear it once every 25 years.’ And that left me speechless because I didn’t expect it at all; it shocked me.

I think that based on those words, I actually built my career.

And I think I latched onto that. And my younger brother, Călin, was and still is my biggest supporter; he was by my side unconditionally, I always felt him close, even at a distance. He lived and continues to live my successes and failures with the same intensity.”

Deeply moved, with tears in her eyes, Cornelia Oncioiu tells us how a teacher can save the life of a child otherwise condemned to a life without opportunities. “Mr. Valeriu Sorescu was an extraordinarily interesting man; he gave me everything, he shaped me, he opened my eyes. He, with an imposing stature like Pavarotti, came to my school to talk for me because I wasn’t doing well in math.”

The same singing teacher later encouraged her to study at the Conservatory when her parents were calling her home to Dărmănești.

“After finishing high school, I joined the Cluj Opera choir because I needed a job. I had a lot of financial difficulties because I had no help, no one.

My mother told me: ‘You don’t have money, come home.’ The concept of music didn’t exist for her. And I said, no, I want to continue making music, and I stayed. My singing teacher told me at the beginning: ‘You have to do classical music; you have a voice for opera music, leave pop music. You won’t do much with it.’ I still wanted to do pop music, until in my third year of singing, he gave me an aria from Azucena, from Trovatore (n.r. The Troubadour, by Giuseppe Verdi).

This woman, Azucena, mistakenly threw her own child into the fire instead of the other one, wanting revenge. All of this had a very big impact on me because it overlapped with events from my personal life that were very significant, very painful, and so, I immediately understood the text. And I said: ‘If this is opera, this is what I want to do!’

It wasn’t complicated for someone with my experiences. When you come from a family with an alcoholic father, with a mother who yells from morning to night, the emotional burden is always within you.

The choir master of the Cluj Opera was very favorably impressed and said, ‘Yes, indeed, that is a true mezzo-soprano voice. When there is a competition, you will come to the competition and you will be part of our choir, if you want.’

I worked there for 3 years, until 1997.”

In parallel, she participated in and won the most important competitions in Romania, such as Hariclea Darclée, Eugenia Moldoveanu, Sabin Drăgoi, or Ionel Perlea. She began to build a career as a soloist, enjoying the trust and support of the great Romanian soprano Mariana Nicolesco. In 1997, she moved to Timișoara, where she was admitted to the Conservatory, and continued to perform as a soloist at the Cluj or Timișoara Opera, and to sing on the stage of the Romanian Athenaeum in Bucharest.

“In the 2001-2002 season, when I was finishing my studies, I applied for competitions at the operas in Bucharest, Cluj, and Timișoara and had passed the stages at all of them. But, at the same time, as a result of a project with the French Cultural Center in Timișoara, I was going to have an audition in Bucharest for Monique Devaux, who is still the director of the Auditorium at the Louvre.

I traveled all night by train from Timișoara to Bucharest to have the audition in the morning at the Opera, in front of Mrs. Devaux. I knew it was for a lady from France, but I didn’t know who she was.”

She waited all morning on the stairs of the Bucharest Opera to be let in for the audition, and the wait was worth it, as that was the meeting that would radically mark her career.

“She liked it very much and wrote a letter of recommendation for me to the Paris Opera Academy, which is a kind of school, but the admitted people are like employees, in fact. We had teachers, pianists, free training, and our duty was to sing on stage if requested, or to be understudies for some shows.

There were only 5 spots and 250 applicants. When I got there and saw that, I started to tremble and said, well, now it’s life and death. When you put me in a situation like that, I go and show everything I can; nothing can stand in my way, I don’t see, I don’t hear, I disappear into another universe.

I got in here, and at the same time, the competition at the Bucharest Opera was finishing, and I said yes, I choose Paris!

It wasn’t the money that attracted me, but the study; I wanted to learn as much as possible, to be in an environment where I had as much high-level information as possible, which I have to admit I didn’t have in Romania.

How many years did you study at the Academy here?

Two years.

And what happened after that?

Well, even before I was admitted to the Academy, they already offered me work. I did my first production as an understudy, right here at Garnier, with the role of Cornelia from Giulio Cesare (n.r. opera by Handel). The Opera also helped me with accommodation because I had only found a place for the period when I was starting the Academy. But until then, I had nowhere to stay. They found me an apartment right across from the Opéra Bastille.

Back then, there was a FNAC right in front. And they had the habit, as they do now, when there is an opera premiere, of highlighting all the records of that opera. And I didn’t know who those artists were, because at home we didn’t have YouTube, we didn’t have the internet, we didn’t have anything. I knew nothing about Mark Minkowski (n.r. French conductor) and a lot of other greats from here. I had the cast list, but it was only when I went into FNAC and saw Mark Minkowski, Mark Minkowski, Mark Minkowski everywhere, and all the people who were in the show, that I broke out in a sweat and said: ‘I can’t believe it, I’m going to go rehearse with these people tomorrow.’”

This year, Cornelia Oncioiu celebrates 21 years since her debut at the Opéra Bastille in Dialogues des carmélites. In all this time, her CV has become impressive, being a constant presence in the productions of the Parisian opera – Giulio Cesare, Elektra, Louise, The Barber of Seville, Madama Butterfly, Parsifal, Lucia di Lammermoor, Traviata, Le Soulier de satin are just a few of them. She has also sung at the Bordeaux National Opera in Rusalka, at the Grand Théâtre d’Avignon in Rusalka and Peter Grimes, and at the Marseille Opera in Madama Butterfly. Noticed by specialists in Paris, she has been invited to be part of performances staged in Amsterdam, Geneva, Monte Carlo, Tokyo, Santiago de Chile, and Shanghai.

“It’s not enough to sing beautifully or well; you have to be very responsive. That is, the moment you are told something, you have to immediately deliver what is asked of you. This is very important. Whether it comes from a conductor or a director. If you don’t react immediately to do what is said, in general, you are not given a second chance. In opera, at this level, no one really has patience with you.”

Although she was performing an episodic role, a critic from the New York Times noticed her in Traviata, alongside the main soloists – “Cornelia Oncioiu brings rich mezzo tones to the few lines she has to sing,” the New York Times article states.

Through music, she has seen different corners of the world, but she has collaborated least with Romania, being better known in France, her adopted country, than in her native country. In fact, this is the first interview she has given to a Romanian publication since settling in France.

How did you manage to integrate into everything that the world of Parisian opera means, beyond the artistic aspect?

It wasn’t easy for me. The difficulty comes from the difference in culture. The environment is not the same. We Romanians are more open; we get straight to the point. They are more diplomatic, they discuss things differently, they never say things to your face.

It’s hard at the beginning from a human point of view, until you make friends, until you get used to it. What most determined me to stay here was the cultural level and diversity.

If I had stayed in Romania, I don’t know what my life would have been like, but here I managed to buy an apartment, I managed to do so many extraordinary shows, to meet so many people, to sing under the baton of so many important conductors, to discover the world, to see art, to discover literature. You don’t feel like going back as long as you can benefit from all of this.

It’s true that for a soloist, as in my case, it’s very difficult because you always have to be well prepared, you always have to be at a high level. Any problem that arises puts you at a disadvantage and can quickly bring you down.

Whereas if you’re in a troupe in Romania, you don’t have the same problems. In general, you stay until retirement. It’s true that here you don’t have the same security or stability, but you have a lot of different soloists all the time, some of the world’s immense artists, the repertoire is very varied, the level of the orchestra is completely different, with extraordinary guest conductors.

Which work dynamic do you think is healthier, the one in Romania with all the artists employed or this one where artists are independent and work on a project basis?

I’m sorry, I don’t know if someone will accuse me or won’t like my answer, but I definitely opt for the second one. As a soloist, you realize you have to maintain your voice constantly, to work, to study. When the competition is high, of course, it makes you study and be prepared, because otherwise, someone else will take your place. This is also valid for directing, not just for soloists.”

Among the great directors she has worked with at the Paris National Opera are the American Robert Wilson and the Romanian Andrei Șerban.

“For me, Robert Wilson will remain hard to match, from many points of view. With him, I did Madama Butterfly at the Opéra Bastille, in 2009 and 2014, with me in the role of Suzuki. He insisted on the idea that when you perform and address someone, the feeling you want to convey doesn’t just go to the front. The energy circulates in multiple directions: up, down, front, back. If there’s a partner behind you, you don’t see them, but you have to feel them; you have to feel the energy with them, to make a connection with them.

A lot of soloists go on stage and care very little about their partners; they only focus on themselves, on shining, and that’s not okay.

With Andrei Șerban, I have some fabulous memories; I really liked Andrei! We are a bit made of the same dough. We both have a kind of simplicity and a direct style of communication, we understood each other very well.

I did L’italiana in Algerie at Garnier in 2010. And before that, Lucia di Lammermoor at Bastille. Andrei is spontaneous, he’s intelligent, he’s modest, he’s creative, free, he’s human, very human. He’s also charming, but it seems to me that the charm in people like this also comes from the fact that they have kept something of their childhood somewhere, that innocence in their soul.

What are the greatest satisfactions you have in your work?

The most satisfying moments are when you have partners you are on the same wavelength with and there is intensity. Intensity in emotions, in dedication, in responsiveness. It’s nice when your partner gives you a true look in the eye and isn’t the type who looks through you and sings their part, thinking about what they have to do.

With what partners have you experienced this?

Diana Damrau comes to mind now, for example, when we sang Traviata together, Sonya Yoncheva.

Then, there’s also the joy that comes from self-transcendence – when you manage to do difficult things that you never dreamed of.”

Having left a country that was still learning what democracy was and arriving in the heart of a culture that puts artistic freedom first, Cornelia Oncioiu has managed to build an international career through her own efforts and by eliminating any cultural barriers in her path.

The Paris National Opera, a benchmark of innovation and modernity, continues to work on dismantling clichés and brings multidisciplinary productions to the public, in which classic texts are sometimes combined with contemporary dance, minimalist scenography, and an international cast.

While street breakdancers were invited on stage there alongside the opera soloists in the revolutionary production Les Indes Galantes, the Bucharest National Opera was still trying to recover after numerous cases of corruption and the famous racism scandal in 2016 when Romanian artists demanded the removal of foreign collaborators and booed the great ballerina Alina Cojocaru, along with her partner, choreographer Johan Kobborg.

This year, the Bucharest National Opera again blundered with a campaign trying to “educate” the public – “How we dress at the opera” – presenting a hypersexualized and clichéd image of a fashion model wearing an evening gown. In contrast, at the Bastille, given that it is a common activity for them, many French people go to the opera directly from work, wearing casual clothes.

“I have been here for 20 years; it is a huge creative force, and the mix of classic and contemporary has become normal. But the audience here is much more open than in Romania.

In Germany, the role of Elvira from Don Giovanni was played this year by a man (n.r. the Brazilian Bruno de Sa), and this stirred numerous comments on the internet. What’s the problem? I mean, who are we to judge? And why should we judge? How does it affect us?

What do you think is the role of opera today, when the world is so dependent on digital technology, and the attention span for a subject lasts only a few seconds?

The role of opera is to make you live experiences other than the ones you are used to; it helps you see various stories from the past, many of which are still valid today, you see how people reacted back then, to know other cultures, other behaviors.

I believe that at the opera, you can experience feelings that I don’t know if you can experience in other forms of art. Of course, you can be moved in front of a painting, in front of a sculpture, or at a theater play, but when the vocal intensity is mixed with music, with scenography, with directing, with dance, with the text, with poetry, it is difficult for that to be equaled by anything else.

I’m curious if your parents got to see you singing on the stage of the Paris Opera.

Yes, my parents came to Paris a few times, and my father, before he died, came a few times and saw me in Paris, Nantes, and Bucharest. And my mother has come a few times.

My mother still lives in Dărmănești; she knows I’m here, but my parents were never very interested in my career, what I do professionally, my evolution. However, I am grateful because they gave me an education and what was necessary in my childhood. Now, as an adult, I have also understood the difficulties they went through.

What else connects you to Romania? Do you still visit your country, are you interested in what’s happening there?

Yes, of course, I’m interested. I was very affected and very preoccupied with the elections; I never in my life wanted a president to be elected as much as I wanted Nicușor Dan to be elected now. Oh my god, what a relief I felt when I saw he was elected. I think I would have cried for days if it hadn’t been so.

It’s interesting that you’re so interested, even though you no longer live there.

Well, you know why? (with tears in her eyes) I want to cry when I think of all the people who worked and struggled before so that we could have what we have now. It’s as if some people no longer appreciate anything. We no longer want Europe, we no longer want freedom, we no longer want anything, we only want ourselves, Romania? Because Europe is taking everything from us. I don’t understand. What is Europe taking from us?

I think about the people who died in the Revolution and the progress that has been made, because progress has been made. Some people don’t want to see it, but I say it has been made.

We are free to leave whenever we want, wherever we want. Isn’t that a good thing?”

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This article is part of the “France Week” series, an initiative by Cultura la dubă supported by BNP Paribas. So far, within this project, Cultura la dubă has presented the stories of 22 Romanian artists and cultural figures based in France.

The post From Dărmănești to the Paris National Opera, the voice of mezzo-soprano Cornelia Oncioiu is the cry of a generation appeared first on Cultura la dubă.