The Netherlands – “Nina” by Fanny & Alexander at the international festival "O. Festival for Opera. Music. Theatre."
The international festival O. Festival for Opera. Music. Theatre. takes place in Rotterdam from May 16 to 26. Ten days with more than 60 productions – the most diverse performances, but with the narrative power of the singing voice as the guiding principle.
It is the ideal context for the performance Nina by Fanny & Alexander, a homage to the singer, pianist, and civil-rights activist Eunice Kathleen Waymon, known as Nina Simone.
The award-winning American soprano Claron McFadden plays the lead in this “mimetic portrait” created by Luigi De Angelis and Chiara Lagani. By transmitting an audio track via earphones worn on stage by the actor – a technique Fanny & Alexander has termed “eterodirezione” (heterodirection) –, Claron McFadden takes on, and is taken over by, the voice of the singer from recordings of interviews and public speeches, expressing to the audience the creative spirit of Nina Simone, the importance of her activism and her most intimate fragility.
And, as the O. festival artistic director Guy Coolen underlines in his introduction of the show, «When Claron appears on stage, Nina Simone seems to be present live».
Nina is on stage on May 20 and 21 at the TR25 Schouwburg (8 pm).