Back on television with a program about opera: it is a dream come true for Chazia Mourali. Almost twenty years after her start as a presenter of The weakest link she hopes so Chazia & Puccini will yield her many more television programs.
“I can now quite hard to get and run cool, but of course I want to make more television. I would love to create more of these series. That is really a dream for 2021 “, Mourali said in conversation with NU.nl.” If people take a look and it is well received, I will hopefully be able to make more. “
The presenter and journalist went looking for what she really wanted to do when the collaboration with RTL ended. “I asked myself: what am I most fond of doing, even if it doesn’t generate money? The answer was simple, because that was opera. I came into contact with Pierre Audi (artistic director and director of De Nederlandse Opera until 2018, ed.) and that’s how the ball started rolling. “
Mourali’s love for opera has been in it from an early age and her daughter Jasmijn was also born with it. Opera became an important theme in Mourali’s work: she wrote columns and has been making radio for NPO Radio 1 and NPO Radio 4 for years, including about the music form. The love for Giacomo Puccini, which, inter alia Bohemian in Tosca is now the subject of a program she is making for the NTR.
“Television does reach more people, so that we can now make a program about it is fantastic. You can also do more: we talk to an organist in Lucca, where Puccini comes from, who has an old organ with Puccini’s name in the side. You want to see that, not just hear it. It also made a lot clear to me: the arguments in his marriage make a lot more sense when you consider how small they lived at the time. “
‘Finally on TV as you really are’
Mourali hopes that her enthusiasm for the work of Puccini and other composers will inspire other people. “On Radio 4 you make something for enthusiasts, on television it can also be people who happen to pass by, or who are fans of Italy and would like to see the beautiful images.”
“I would love to be able to draw other people into my love of opera. It is not at all dusty or old-fashioned, it has always been for everyone and it should be again.”
That people really like the person behind the character that they portrayed The weakest link getting to know is a nice extra. “My husband said: ‘I finally see you on TV as you really are.’ There is no greater compliment than that, is there? I think a lot of people know that I am not really that mean, but that they now actually being able to see is certainly nice. “
Chazia & Puccini can be seen at NTR on NPO2 from 3 January at 7 p.m.
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