Veteran Dutch musical actress recalls her favorite memories of important productions and how Chinese audiences surprise her, Zhang Kun reports.

Dutch musical actress Maya Hakvoort won the Shanghai Magnolia Stage Performance Award on Feb 27. She is one of a few foreign artists to have won the award at all 33 sessions.

The Magnolia Award is Shanghai's annual celebration of live theater and honors the best stage productions and actors. Hakvoort won the award for her performance in the title role of Lady M, a musical production in English by Shanghai Culture Square and Xu Jun Drama and Musical.

Since landing a role in the musical Chicago in 1988, Hakvoort has built a prolific career on the German and English-language musical scene, performing in several important productions such as Elisabeth, Mozart!, and Evita, among others.

Lady M has an international cast led by Hakvoort and is the first English-language musical production created in China. Written by British playwrights James Beeny and Gina Georgio, it premiered at Shanghai's MIFA 1862 Theater.

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"In 2023, director Xu Jun asked me to play the main role in Lady M," Hakvoort tells China Daily before receiving the Magnolia Award. The production has three male English actors and the rest of the cast is Chinese. "I was thrilled. The whole show was in English, which was easy for me to learn. It was modern Shakespeare in a modern setting and costumes."

Working with the Chinese production team was also a new experience for Hakvoort. As a performer used to playing powerful female roles, Hakvoort says: "I make very brave choices." Meanwhile, she found the actors in China would "do what the director says and then put a little of their own spin on it".

"We learn from each other," she says. "As a result, we had to melt together. We met each other in the middle."

Lady M is a dark story about war, rage and murder, and the title character is unlike the traditional female roles in Chinese theater. "She is not that feminine and thrives on power and strength," Hakvoort says.

Many musical lovers in China got to know Hakvoort in Elisabeth, a benchmark musical in German based on the true life story of Austrian Empress Elisabeth, who is also known as Sisi. Hakvoort has performed Elisabeth more than 1,000 times since 1994 and was the star in the official DVD edition.

"Elisabeth made my career grow," she says about the most important production of her career. "Because you play from ages 14 to almost 61, it is such an intense acting process. I think this is the only role that goes through this many life stages."

After performing Elisabeth in a concert in Vienna in 2023, she thought maybe that could be her last time in the role, but a few weeks ago, she received a phone call from Munich asking her to play Elisabeth the next day because "everyone was sick".

She drove from Vienna to Munich in four hours, did the rehearsal, put the costumes on and played Elisabeth one more time.

"I played it when I had no children, then I played it when I had children, and then I played it when I was a bit older. As I age, I play the part better. I can see Elisabeth every time of the day. The music, the voice and the script are in my system. I never say it's my last time."

In 2014, as a guest star during the musical's tour of Shanghai, Hakvoort went on stage at the Shanghai Culture Square for the first time. In 2019, she returned to the theater again with other colleagues for a gala concert. Since then, she has built a solid fan base in China, especially in Shanghai.

In 2023, Shanghai Culture Square invited her for three recitals. To her surprise, the tickets sold out in one and a half days.

"It was amazing. I remember it like it was yesterday. I came on stage and 1,900 people applauded. It was like a shower of appreciation washing over me.

"When you live and work in Europe, you don't realize there is a fan base in China. It is so overwhelming."

Hakvoort gave two more recitals at Shanghai Culture Square on Saturday and Sunday, when she performed English and German songs from important productions from her musical career through the decades.

The show was part of the 2025 Musical Stars Live Concerts, a new series introduced this year by Shanghai Culture Square. Her colleague Mark Seibert, who is familiar to Chinese audiences as Death in Elisabeth, performed on Feb 8 and 9, followed by a strong cast including French singer Laurent Ban.

Zhang Yixin, a 27-year-old school teacher, attended the Saturday concert in traditional Chinese clothing and there were also youngsters dressed up as Elisabeth and Death.

"I came to her concert the year before, saw Lady M last year, and watched many of her other productions on video," Zhang tells China Daily. "I love Maya for her powerful voice and portrayal of powerful female characters."

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According to Zhu Guang, a theater critic in Shanghai, part of the reason Hakvoort is widely loved by musical fans in China is that "female audiences project their preference for the power and determination in the roles she plays, especially Elisabeth, a show that combines rationality and sensibility, historical narrative and philosophical reflection".

In China, the majority of those attending musicals are female and they identify with characters such as Sisi, and even the murderous Lady Macbeth, Zhu says.

Modern urban Chinese women want to "control their fate, have real power, and freely express their emotions as Maya does in the show". Her vocal strength is "second to none among all the female musical actors on tour in China," Zhu adds.

Contact the writer at zhangkun@chinadaily.com.cn