Swiss-born artiste Neda Cainero carves her own path abroad
Singer, actor and acrobat Neda Cainero is making a name for herself in France. The daughter of Swiss comedian and clown Gardi Hutter and Italian storyteller and stage director Ferruccio Cainero has chosen to forge her own artistic path abroad – in a country where she is not known as her parents’ daughter.
Despite having lived outside Switzerland for many years, the 35-year-old artiste from Ticino still feels a strong tie to the canton where she was born and bred.
A love of the stage runs in Neda Cainero’s blood. Her father, mother and brother are all theatre artists. So it is hardly surprising that she feels at home in this milieu. Nevertheless, it was not a foregone conclusion that Cainero would follow in her family’s footsteps.
Cainero is full of admiration for her mother, who is well known in German-speaking Switzerland. “Back home, I’m often introduced as ‘the daughter of’, but in my professional sphere my mother isn’t very well known,” she says. This, she admits, may be why until now she has focused on music – so as not to be working in the same field as her mother. But, in the future, she would like to “get deeper into the world of clowning”.
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Cainero would gladly have inherited her mother’s organisational flair in managing artistic projects, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. “I’m great at doing things on the spur of the moment, but it can take me two weeks to write an email,” she laughs.
Nor did Cainero inherit the language from her German-speaking mother. She can understand it but barely speaks it. “I refused to speak it when I was younger, which is something I really regret today.” Now, however, she is nurturing her German skills, “as they are part of my roots”.
Having grown up in Ticino, her first language is Italian. She picked up Spanish while travelling around Latin America and now uses French every day as she lives in the French city of Marseille. “I speak desperanto”, she jokes, “a happy mix of all these languages”. This fusion of different influences is also reflected in her music.
Schoolbooks in a suitcase
Although it may seem as if her path was predestined, Cainero’s parents never pushed their children to pursue a career in the arts. But “they showed us that with a lot of hard work, an artist’s life is possible”, she says.
Gardi Hutter and Ferrucio Cainero split up when their daughter was two. But they always arranged their tours so as not to be away at the same time. “My brother and I used to haul our schoolbooks and personal belongings from one home to the other in a big suitcase,” she recalls.
While she might not have inherited certain organisational and linguistic skills, Cainero certainly has plenty of artistic talent in her genes.
As a teenager, however, she dreamed not of a life on stage but of “saving the planet”, she says, smiling at her candour at the time.
Having developed a keen interest in biology, she went on to study science and ethnology at the University of Neuchâtel, with the aim of understanding the relationship between human society and the environment. But the academic world was not for her long term, she realised, and she dreamed of “more poetic things”.
Musical interests gain ground
During her studies, Cainero was already involved in a number of musical projects.
“I’d always sung a lot, especially with my father,” she says. As a child, she performed in his shows and recorded songs he had composed.
Her interest in music thus gradually gained ground over her pursuit of science. To progress in this field and strengthen her theoretical background, she enrolled in a music course in Cork, Ireland. After that, she joined her brother Juri, who had settled in Marseille and set up his own theatre company, Onyrikon.
Cainero is not just a talented singer. She plays several musical instruments and does acrobatics, a passion that comes from gymnastics, which she began at an early age. At university, she also discovered capoeira, a Brazilian martial art that combines music, dance and fighting.
In the show Bourriques, which she staged with French actress Carole Joffrin, she was able to give free rein to all the art forms she loves to practise.
Return to Switzerland?
In addition to her theatrical performances, Cainero forms the duo I Sorelli with her brother, reinterpreting traditional instrumental music from southern Italy. She also performs with her solo project Azul y Verde, into which she pours all the themes that are close to her heart, such as nature and humanity.
From time to time, Neda Cainero thinks about returning to Switzerland. She feels lucky to have grown up there, so close to nature. And if ever she has children, she would like to be able to give them the same opportunity.
A photo of Lake Lugano, with Monte San Giorgio in the centre, forms the background to every page of her website. “This is where I started out,” she says. It is a bond that remains strong – even though, at 35, she will soon have spent more years abroad than in Ticino.
Edited by Samuel Jaberg. Adapted from French by Julia Bassam/ts
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