Karina Gauvin is habit-forming. I first encountered her in the Alan Curtis Alcina, with Joyce DiDonato in the title role. Actually, that may not be true. I have a sneaking feeling that Karina and I first crossed paths some years earlier, when I happened to hear her recording of Knoxville: Summer of 1915 on the radio. At least, I think it was hers. I can't claim — wish I could — that she hooked me then, but she certainly has hooked me now.
Actually the Alcina didn't quite do that either. It put her name back at the front of my brain, and made me take notice, but let's face it: that Alcina was too busy feeding my Joyce habit to be creating any new addictions. No, what hooked me on Karina was her disc of Porpora arias. How, I ask you, could any sopranophile resist singing like this?
You see what I mean. I loved her in the Alcina but partly, I must confess, in a "wow, a second Sandrine Piau" kind of way. Now I hardly hear the resemblance: she just sounds like Karina and I love Karina. No doubt it helped that I was listening to that Porpora disc on pretty much a daily base for quite some time. In fact it still hasn't left my iPod — which is saying something, because my iPod is tiny and I'm constantly deleting music in order to add new stuff.
So now is where the addiction kicks in I may have been living under a rock, living a soprano-addicted life for lo, these many years and never running into Karina Gauvin, but the record industry has not been nearly so oblivious. They've been recording her. A lot. Song recitals, aria discs, operas and symphonies and oratorios and it all must be mine.
Eventually it will. Weirdly, I am a completist in theory but fairly slack in practice, so while I drool and drool over the various Karina fixes on offer to me, I only rarely get around to acquiring any of them. It's partly laziness, partly a stubborn, sentimental attachment to the physical CD buying process — flicking through shelves, buying discs over the counter, and building them into a pile which I can walk into and curse for being made of pointy plastic corners. But I have made a start.
And meanwhile, the albums keep coming. I've just finished a review of the latest, a disc of Handel arias and duets with Karina and another awesome French-Canadian singer, Marie-Nicole Lemieux. Gorgeous singing from both of them — I love Marie-Nicole — but with Karina, these days, it's something more. She's like, to introduce a clumsy simile which I will immediately regret, a giant bowl of M&Ms. Every note is sweet and delicious and I always need more.
Best if I stop before comparing her to junk food again. (I do love junk food, though.) How about some singing instead? Here are Karina and Marie-Nicole singing a duet from Solomon. Warning: may be a gateway drug.
Welcome to my addiction.
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