Adopted from Maharashtra orphanage, raised in Denmark, conductor Maria Badstue returns to perform in India

Indian Express

2 days ago

Growing up in Thisted, a tiny Denmark town known for Langdos (a large Bronze Age burial mound) and a Romanesque church from the 13th century, Copenhagen-based music conductor Maria Badstue's world always felt simple yet strange.
While her name sat nice and easy in Scandinavian conversations, the mirror revealed a different story. The person who stared back at her — a brown girl with brown eyes and dark hair — didn't look anything like her 'White parents and brothers' or everyone else around her.
Badstue was just five months old when she was adopted by a Danish couple — a carpenter father and a cook mother who prepared food for the mentally ill — from an orphanage in Maharashtra's Pandharpur, a pilgrimage town on the banks of the Chandrabhaga.
'I was treated like everyone else at home, but I knew I was different,' says Badstue, now 43, whose parents told her early on about her adoption.
On her sixth visit to India since her adoption, Badstue, who will conduct musicians from the Symphony Chamber Orchestra along with musicians from the Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus/Aalborg, and the Royal Danish Academy of Music on June 27 at the ocean-facing National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA) in Mumbai, says she is finally 'feeling at home'.
Growing up, she says, she knew little about her ancestry. For a while, after seeing a Black woman pass her by in the street, she says she wondered if she was of African descent. 'My parents didn't explain much, mainly because they didn't know much, just that I was born in India and that my (birth) parents were probably poor,' says Badstue.
She'd feel excluded when people spoke to her in English in Denmark even though she spoke perfect Danish, but Badstue was never overly curious about her ancestry. In fact, she didn't look at her adoption papers until 2017 despite having access to them.
In 2017, she received an invitation to conduct the famed Italian opera, Il Matrimonio Segreto (The Secret Marriage), at Mumbai's Royal Opera House. That year, she finally opened the box with her adoption papers. Thirty-five years after her adoption, Badstue travelled to India, where she had an emotional moment post touchdown.
'I cried,' she says, 'For the first time, everyone looked like me.'
Badstue, who has visited Pandharpur and the orphanage on one of her previous visits, says, 'It's a coincidence to actually be able to come here (India) with music. I can't think of a more beautiful way to connect with India. It is different to come here as a tourist, and I never did… because I thought I can't just go there as a tourist. Then, I was suddenly invited. This time (her sixth visit), for the first time, I am not astonished that everyone here is brown. It's a cliché, but it feels like home.'
She still gets taken aback when people start speaking to her in Hindi and ends up with an awkward 'excuse me' in response.
On Friday, Badstue will climb the podium and wield the baton to present music from Scandinavian repertoire, including compositions by prominent Danish composer Carl Nielsen, 19th-century Finnish-Swedish composer Ingeborg Bronsart von Schellendorf, and Finnish great Jean Sibelius. There will also be Piano Concerto No 2 in C Minor by Russian composing giant Sergei Rachmaninoff — composers that the Indian audience isn't used to.
'I know these are very different (compositions) for Indian ears, in a way, because they're very unfamiliar. But these composers are very close to my heart,' says Badstue, who even lived in Odense, birthplace of Nielsen, when she spent some time studying at Carl Nielsen Academy of Music.
Badstue says she was always interested in Western classical music, if and when it played at home, although no one in her family is a musician. Over the years, she says, it has made her wonder if it is genetic.
While she started playing the trumpet early on, starting with the brass band of the local scout organisation, she conducted her first brass band at 14. Having conducted her first professional orchestra at 20, she went to the Danish National Academy of Music, where she studied the trumpet.
Conducting, says Badstue, was 'development for a shy and anxious kid' like her, in terms of being able to stand in front of musicians and guide them. Later, she was mentored by Finnish music giant Jorma Panula, perhaps the most influential music conducting teacher in the world. 'Conducting is abstract. It is much more about the whole personality, stamina and what you can endure. And he (Panula) is very smart; he can really see through people. He knows what different people need, and understands the mental and psychological journey needed to be a conductor. It was important for me to have someone with that sort of capacity and fame to support me, because I came from sort of nowhere in Denmark. No one was a professional musician (at home). So I needed someone who really understood music,' she says.
Armed with a master's degree in conducting from the Norwegian Academy of Music, she debuted with the Copenhagen Philharmonic in 2013. She is also the founder of the annual Nordic Masterclass for Conductors.
Badstue, who remains committed to modern opera, says she was never curious to listen to, understand or learn Indian music despite Internet access. She says she also never came across anything by any Indian musician, including Pandit Ravi Shankar, whose music is popular in Europe.
'I just didn't do it. I was really a little bit reluctant. Also, because I didn't want to be put in this box of being Indian. Secondly, I was occupied with classic scores. Studying them engrossed me completely,' says Badstue, who attended an instrumental music performance on her last trip to India.
Later this year, she will work with Nirupama Rao, India's former Foreign Secretary and a musician who heads the South Asian Symphony Foundation. Badstue will conduct the South Asian Symphony Orchestra and work on a Bollywood song project in Bengaluru in August.
In India, where the art of orchestral conducting largely remains misunderstood, Badstue has met one of the profession's most significant exports from India: Zubin Mehta.
'I was taking rehearsals for him last August and met him for a week. It was so nice to meet him. I had never met a conductor of Indian descent and I think we were both a bit touched by that. He is, of course, a great conductor so it was pleasant to work for him,' says Badstue.
Badstue, who lives in Copenhagen with her husband and daughter at present, currently splits her time between the city and international tours. She says she hopes to return to India often and help develop Western classical music here.
'India is a very young country when it comes to Western classical music. We lack teachers in India. There are no shortcuts to learning this music. We need the ones who teach every day. You can have master classes and fly someone in, but the music has to be practised regularly for it to develop into something,' says Badstue.