Fani Ardan. “Freedom is not given, it is taken, we don’t wait for it like a beaten dog.”

Interviewing Fanny Ardan is like meeting a storm. A warrior who focuses on words and ideas to convey them, while his thoughts take him to a land of flames and fire, where the 75-year-old Fanny Ardan cannot enter has than the power plant. The actress, who has toured with the greats, has also become a huge thing thanks to her rejection of convention and narrowness, carried away by her unique horizon-clearing expressions.She has just staged at the Greek National Opera, Alex: (1), soon to be broadcast in Mezzo, Rachmaninoff’s one-act opera, the last work at the Moscow Conservatory for the then 19-year-old (1892) composer and little performed. “A short, brutal, and tragic story,” he explains. “Sick love story,” as he likes them. We’ll find it on screens on January 22 Back to AlexandriaBy Tamer Rugley. In the spring, he will shoot his sixth film in the Azores, about a woman who has lost her memory. He took the title from a passage by Pushkin. “He looked, seeing nothing.”

The meeting takes place in the restaurant of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where her arrival, a slender and elegant figure, with a silk scarf and large black glasses protected during the day, signals the stranger with the diva is whether we can go down to the reserve. And we go down the stairs to the kitchen in the basement with a strange impression of the scene, which is similar to the reworking of the scene. Last metro… During the interview, the restaurant staff will also descend to the cellar to see the unexpected guest.

Madame Figaro. – How was the premiere of Aleko directed by you?
Fani Ardan. – I had bad stage fright. I look like a stranger, I don’t want to make a career, I’m an actress. I did two productions at the Châtelet under Jean-Luc Choplin and this is the second one in Greece with Giorgos Koumendakis, the artistic director of the Greek National Opera. It’s a huge gift when we trust you. We only have one fear: the theater, the cinema or the common thread of the opera is the passion we put into doing things.Tell yourself that it is one shot. I like relationships with singers, even if I’m not a singer. Opera is almost an obsolete genre, because today we all, as spectators, are a generation of cinema, accustomed to close-ups, immediately perceptible emotions. On the other hand, opera is a square in a circle where we have to sing and live what we express. I often told the singers during rehearsals. “If you want perfection, listen to the radio or buy a CD. But when you come to the opera, you have to burn.” I understand the great difficulty of an opera singer. he has to follow the conductor, his voice, all these parameters… I love them, opera singers, even if I shake them, saying “but do you understand what you are singing?”

Why did you choose this early piece by Rachmaninov?
I have a passion for Russian music, Russian literature, Russian poets, this is not new… I wanted to put something that I had never seen, hence Aleko. However, I went to the opera very young. It was for La Traviata, I must have been 13, at the Salle Garnier in Monaco. And interestingly, I went to the opera more than the cinema then, and I think that fueled my passion for the theater. In the cinema, which is almost hypnotic in nature, I was rarely bored, whereas I was often bored in the theatre.. But the day when you are not bored is unforgettable. i saw The seagull I don’t know how many times and once, a long time ago, in a French production by Otomar Krejci, a great Czech director, the one who suddenly moved me, this is not Nina, the seagull, but Masha.

You used to say: “the theater cleanses me, the cinema makes me crazy…” What does opera bring you?
He excites me. I’m tired because I’m passionate…

Do you often get told that you are “tiring”?
Yes! People often say to me: “You have to sleep well at night.” For me, everything is in the details…

In what? Alex: is it still relevant?
These are the two passions of my life that made me choose Aleko: Russian music and the gypsy community. The opera is inspired by a story: Gypsies – wrote Pushkin, one of my favorite writers. Interestingly, it was translated by Prosper Merier. There is also Carmen In Aleko… Pushkin and the aristocrats of St. Petersburg loved to go to see the gypsies dancing in the cabarets on the outskirts of the city. Aleko, the main character, is a Russian who falls madly in love with a gypsy woman, for whom he leaves everything. But one day he, whom he loved, falls in love with a young gypsy woman and deceives Aleco, who kills her, just as Don José kills Carmen because he is in love with Escamillo. Rachmaninov had listened to Bizet’s opera. Meryme wrote her story after Carmen, I find that everything is food. I don’t remember who said “You should always put your easel in front of someone you admire.” Not to copy, but to be inspired and present your own obsessions… There were two themes I loved. Alex: Love and freedom. What price are we willing to pay to have it? That’s my big thing, even if I’m slapped on the wrist for it, freedom is taken away. We are not waiting for him like a beaten dog. I am part of a generation where there were already feminists. But even in these feminist movements, I wanted to keep my freedom. I grew up with a mother who studied law, and as soon as she got to know my father, she took care of him and his children. She was a happy woman. And I did the opposite. Who is right and who is wrong? We only have one life.” There was a third thing that I liked: when the gypsies leave, they leave Aleko and do not take revenge. For me, “forgiveness is stronger than justice”. The gypsies leave Aleko in his despair, he is no longer part of their community, from where he was chased, because he is wild and did not respect human life. That’s it, in this little tale there was everything that I loved. Pushkin tells us a story of crazy love, where we miss out on happiness by our own fault to realize it. In her real life she was a seductress; when I love someone, I’m too much and I want to know everything, so I read everything about him. He took a long time to get married and married a very beautiful woman, Natalya de Goncharova, whom a Frenchman was in love with. . Pushkin challenged him to a duel, and he died. Do you know what his name was, this Frenchman? Dante! Like Edmond Dantes, it all comes together!

For you, everything is drama and tragedy.
Yes, everything! I could never collect a light story… I always did things as if it was the last time. I don’t have a country house, but I did what I wanted. It’s an incredible luxury in this profession. I’ve never made a film for money. Not because I’m a monk, but because I’ve never been able to play a character I didn’t like. I often tell myself I’m not a professional actress, because even if you can play anything, you should love it. I can love a terrorist, a criminal… – I say I love him to live. We only have one life, and I love this job so much that I never wanted to entertain it for money or a career : Often I shot failures or films that were not successful, but I lived and I can claim them because I was happy during the two months I shot. And who can take that away from you? Whereas if we follow the strategy, we have lost everything…

What’s gypsy in you?
In advance! Come on (she snaps her fingers), it’s your way that makes your life. Feel free, whatever it is, for what it’s worth struck by the Never Again aspect.. “oh ok” say the Italians.never again” for the English… Look, this kitchen we’re in, with this noise, it’s never coming back, it’s the present moment.

Carpe Diem…
Yes! This time will pass, so live. Immerse yourself in it and you will pay the price for your actions. I wanted to pay…

Did you pay too much?
Yes! (Her “Yes” falls like a knife, driven by a dull ache Editor’s note) But it seemed like a bargain. “You played with fire, too bad for you.” I knew. It is true that opera magnifies extreme passions, love, violence, murders. All that I loved. Very young, I read Dostoevsky and back The idiotI knew that I was being told something very important, because the image of Prince Myshkin has haunted me all my life. I knew she was right. Me, I’m not quite there, but I realized that you should aim to be like her, that is, to be good, to reach out, to look like an idiot, because you greet the women in the room like an empress. . I liked all this. And to be called an idiot, especially in our societies, you have to wear it like a crown. For some, you can be an idiot, for others, a prince.

(1) DiffusionAlex: Rachmaninoff and Bluebeard’s Castle by Bartók at Mezzo Live on December 15 at 21:00 and at various times until January 13. mezzo.tv/fr
Alex: On December 15, at 20:00, it will also be broadcast on medici.tv