Professional piano player and actress
I’ve known Anastasia Kuleva, Nastia, for nearly six months. Although she’s only twenty-six years old, her stories and experiences are seemingly inexhaustible and I’ve heard many over a cappuccino or during our frequent walks around the city. So this interview appeared a nice opportunity to get to know more about her. “We’ll just have a little talk, nothing more,” I told her as Nastia tried to wave off the interview and laughingly said “People always say, “just have a little talk,” at least that’s what I usually say.”
Nastia started her career as piano player in Odessa, studying in a music school and later entered a conservatory. However, she only studied at the latter for two years before she decided to leave Ukraine to try herself on the Italian stage. She was away for six years. “Italians always ask me why I have chosen Italy, since Ukraine has a very good school of classic music” Nastia said. “Because of Celentano! While listening to him I understood that I want to go to the country where people could sing like that,” she recalled, her eyes shining.
After she enrolled into a conservatory of Turin, in Northern Italy, the first things she had to do was study Italian and find a job to pay for living expenses. “I’ve studied Italian for three months in a catholic school, we had a group that didn’t know the language at all and a talented teacher, who only spoke Italian and explained everything with gestures,” Nastia nervously recalled the period. As every student knows, that once you can find your way in a new environment with out an interpreter learning is easier and more productive. According to Nastia, Italians are actually trying hard to understand foreigners, unlike French for example, so they made it easier to adapt.
Though it took Nastia twice as much time to get an Italian diploma it was a great experience for her. From the beginning she played with advanced musicians as unlike Ukrainians “they were not prejudiced because of my age and immediately considered me to be a part of the family,” she argued. She learned Italians start their music studies later then their Ukrainian colleagues, at about nine to ten years old, and says they “do it with all their passion and with the deepest interest, no one forces them.” She also says that theory studies in the conservatory appeared to be on higher level then in Odessa and it took all of her effort to pass the exams..
Another of Nastia’s discoveries in Italy was opera: “If you want to understand and to fall in love with opera you should go to Italy,” she exclaims. With a mixed feelings of pain and joy she told me how difficult it is to accompany opera singers: “You should learn a bulky volume of notes – to know the part of the orchestra, of the vocalist, your own part, of course, and to follow the conductor; regardless, vocalists always blame the pianist after singing a false note,” she snorted.
Playing the piano wasn’t the only occupation that earned Nastia means for living. She worked as a hotel waitress, fashion model, and an actress. Working in a hotel was the hardest time, she recalls, “while I was gathering the dishes and washing them, I could hear Chopin playing in the hall and tears would fill my eyes, I wanted to play so much,” she said as if experiencing it all over again and tears welled her eyes. Nastia didn’t find a stable pianist position until after she finished the conservatory got married and gave birth to her daughter Sonia.
To Nastia, the most difficult aspect of living in Italy was the difference in mentalities. “Italians are too focused on luxury which narrows their circle of interests,” Nastia shared, and while there are exceptions “as a result they work six days a week to go out one evening in a chic restaurant, clothed in a chic clothes accompanied by a chic woman.” Another negative aspect was the lack of true friends (in the Ukrainian sense) among Italians. “Italians differ from region to region – in the South they are more open, friendly, emotional, yet nevertheless they are not as used to close friendship as Ukrainians are,” remarked Nastia sipping her coffee, comfortable in an armchair in her Ukrainian house.
After spending six years in Italy, she understood that Italy is not the country, where she wanted to spend the rest of her life. Nearly two years ago, after coming back to Ukraine, she “changed her artistic muse” and plunged into theater acting. When we first met she had had a year of practice in an Odessa theatre, acted in movies, started her studies to get an acting diploma and caught the movie direction bug.
