Why in the Netherlands do the lockdown when it can also be done on sunny Curaçao? Mezzo-soprano Tania Kross took a good look at it. As a Weekend Guide, she puts a heart on our poor losers with fine viewing, reading and listening tips.

For once, Tania Kross (44) makes an exception. The mezzo-soprano doesn't do visual bubbles: she thinks that's a bit sad for the people in the Netherlands. Because they then see that she is just sitting with the wind in her hair under a palapa, such a permanent parasol of palm leaves, happily. In the autumn she swapped Gouda for Curaçao, where she was born and raised. She's been there for six months now..

What do you mean actually? Schaterlach. 'I don't know if you got it, maybe it did pass in your Facebook feed, but there's a pandemic in the world.'Yes, the reporter has taken note of that. “And the theatres are closed. Well, I operate the most in theatres. So why should I stay in the Netherlands? The Night of Film Music in the Ziggo Dome has been postponed three times, waiting can also be here. Last summer we were here visiting my parents. That's when I felt that freedom.. For example, the catering industry has never been close in Curaçao, is it? Everything is taking place outside. In August I just gave a concert here for 600 men.

“I wanted to give that sense of freedom to my children. Then my husband I decided to settle here, for at least a year and a half. Feels good not to be here on vacation anymore. For the first time since I was 17, when I moved to the Netherlands to go to the conservatory, I have been on my birthplace for more than six weeks in a row.. We celebrated Christmas in a beach tent with the whole family.'


Well, she had a nice job in the neighborhood, too.. Kross was asked to play in a film: Casa Coco. Which was played on Bonaire. It will be her debut as an actress, apart from a supporting role as herself in a film by Jandino Asparaat. 'It will be a feel-good romcom, with the old guard from Rotterdam: Joke Bruijs, Gerard Cox, Loes Luca, Frédérique Spigt... They needed someone else to have the couleur locale look, well, I got it.! I play a cook at the Casa Coco, a distressed guest house. So suddenly there was an invasion of BN'ers on Bonaire. People who were on vacation took pictures and sold them to the tabloids.

'What was really getting used to was: as an opera singer I'm used to talking, singing or acting for the last row. But in film it's too much. I thought, “Why does everyone talk so softly? I'll never be able to watch a movie again without thinking: there's just a whole battery of people behind that camera! By the way, I wouldn't be able to recognize anyone from the crew because of all those masks.Today, the brand new actress chooses her own favorite movie. And of course she has some surgery for us.

Book
'There is a period before and after I read the book Katibu di Shon (1988), some sixteen years ago. It is a historical novel by Carel de Haseth about a slave uprising in Curaçao, about a slave and the son of the master on a plantation growing up together. It is told from those two perspectives. I realized then: if I sing in the opera Andrea Chénier, I can look up anything about the French Revolution. But about my own background, about the Antilles, was so little available. Now there was something that brought to me so much inner healing.

'I knew right away: I have to share this, in this book there is an opera. It took eight years to turn it into an opera. Carel de Haseth himself made the libretto. We turned out to be connected in a bizarre way. The plantation where the story takes place was from his ancestors. And my ancestors lived there like slave people.

'There was one show in Amsterdam, then someone else had to pick it up, but that didn't happen. No registration has been made. Now that I'm on Curaçao, I want to make that recording: an opera film, but contemporary, as a kind of long video clip. There is no more theater here, I want something that stays, as the ultimate declaration of love to my culture and the history of the kingdom.'


Singer Buika

“If I may tip a singer? Buika! She is a Spanish flamenco singer with African roots, raised among the guitanos, the gypsies. I've seen her on North Sea Jazz Curaçao. Randal Corsen, who composed the music for Katibu di Shon, said: go to that hall, you don't know what you hear. So I go there. I sit down: wow. She goes straight to the place you think she's going there? Oh, no! She's going there.. Is she going to? Oh, my gosh, she's breaking through! Then you look at her and you cry, and you think, “girl, come, I'm gonna hug you, this is unfair.

“She made me feel like my child has fallen and blood is coming out of his mouth, I have to go there.. I had never experienced anything like this before, I get chicken skin again.. I listened to all her recordings afterwards, and then I didn't pull it anymore. why? I'm a ball of sunshine. Every time I had a certain fear that I would cry again.'

Read more here:
https://www.volkskrant.nl/mensen/weekendgids-tania-kross-deelt-met-genoegen-haar-genoegens-ik-wil-gewoon-mensen-blij-maken~b9989f5d/


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#katibudishon



Weekend guide Tania Kross is happy to share her pleasures: 'I just want to make people happy. '

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