Celebrated Baroque soprano Karina Gauvin on Johann Adolf Hasse’s La Semele
Alert!! The King and the Queen of Heaven are a mismatched couple!!
Let’s face it, Giove and Giunone’s attachment styles are not aligned and their behaviour towards one another proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt!
How can Giunone live with Giove’s dalliances another minute, having endured the behaviour for centuries already? After making her brief goodbyes to heaven, Giunone flies down to earth to witness the damage first hand; Giove has been unfaithful, AGAIN! Quickly she moves from resentment to utter bitterness. But this time, she means business, she’s had enough, and bad things will go down!! She quickly spins a plot to assure Semele’s demise and gets her way, for awhile, only to have her plans rerouted. In the end, Giove promises to be faithful, but for how long??
This is a sad, sad place to be for a goddess, and for one who ultimately has so much to offer. But it’s often the way it goes with 18th-century baroque opera. One minute you are a fresh young maiden/heroine, joyously savouring life’s garden of delights, singing in dulcet tones, and the next you are a shouting witch, scheming to bring others down. There isn’t much room for the woman of substance in between.
I wonder how Hasse would look at Giunone today, were he given a set of fresh eyes. Would he give Giunone more room to express her many facets? Some sort of jousting duet with Giove? A beautiful lilting aria where she gets to reveal her heart’s discontent and the depth of her soul? Or something like, Giunone rethinks her life strategy, finds her joy, lives her best life and sets herself free? I can see it now, headlining in the Chicago Tribune, "Giunone, queen of heaven, becomes an entrepreneur, launches Badass Glove Company. Something she’s been dreaming about for eternity.” :) Ha Ha!!
Silliness aside, it was great fun to get to know and sing Giunone in this American première of Hasse’s La Semele. There are truly some musical gems in this piece and so much potential for a cracking staged production! I was thankful for all my years of work in baroque opera, singing miles and miles of recitative, as this proved especially useful for this largely declamatory role. Another highlight was of course the chance to share the stage with a wonderful orchestra and my two golden-voiced colleagues, Emily Birsan and Elisabeth DeShong, their vocal contributions making for a perfectly matched pair of lovers and leaving the ears of all who listened in absolute bliss! This made the week of music making especially enjoyable, the days fleeting quickly by.
The Haymarket team took so much care in having this piece engraved and ready for us to work from. Everything was perfectly organized and scheduled, from breakdown of the rehearsal period to having comings and goings blocked and a stage manager supervising us. For an audience, this may fall completely under the radar but for us artists it helps immensely with the task at hand, helping us to minimize stress and to concentrate fully on our musical work. When there is not a lot of time to put a piece together, every rehearsal minute counts!!
Many wonderful things stood out during my time in Chicago. The utterly precious directors Craig Trompeter and Chase Hopkins welcoming me with open arms made for a thoroughly enjoyable and relaxed week. The orchestra worked quickly and efficiently and I was impressed at how easily this two-and-a-half-hour piece came together—a testament to talented professionals arriving prepared and ready to work.
In all my years of touring the world, and there have been many, I don’t think I have ever encountered so many vocal-music enthusiasts gathered in one place. This is truly one of the things that makes this organization unique and so very special—a place for musical buffs to gather and revel in known and unknown nuggets of the baroque period. I hope to encounter this enthusiastic audience again! Thank you for a joyous week of music making, Haymarket Opera!
About the author
Celebrated Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin, “a soprano with true star quality” (Opera Today), makes her Haymarket debut as Giunone (Juno). Recognized for her work in the baroque repertoire, Gauvin sings Mahler, Britten and the music of the late 20th and 21st centuries with equal success. She has received prestigious distinctions, including the title of “Soloist of the Year” awarded by the Communauté internationale des radios publiques de langue française, first prize in the CBC Radio competition for young performers, and the Virginia Parker Prize and Maggie Teyte Memorial Prize in London.
Most recently, Gauvin made appearances in the United States and Canada as soloist in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and the National Arts Centre Orchestra, in Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony with Colorado Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Mozart’s Mass in C Minor with Les Violons du Roy and Quebec Symphony and in Messiah with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Houston Symphony, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra. She also toured widely in Europe, giving concerts and recitals in France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and Britain, including a performance at Wigmore Hall.
Gauvin has sung with the world’s greatest symphony orchestras, including the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, San Francisco Symphony, Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Rotterdam Philharmonic, as well as baroque orchestras such as the English Concert, Les Talens Lyriques, the Venice Baroque Orchestra, Accademia Bizantina, Il Complesso Barocco, the Akademie Für Alte Musik Berlin, the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, and Les Violons du Roy. She has performed under the direction of maestros Semyon Bychkov, Charles Dutoit, Matthew Halls, Bernard Labadie, Kent Nagano, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Sir Roger Norrington, Masaaki Suzuki, Helmuth Rilling, Christophe Rousset, and Michael Tilson Thomas. In addition, she has sung in recital with pianists Marc-André Hamelin, Angela Hewitt, Michael McMahon, and Roger Vignoles.
Notable opera successes include Vitellia in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées; Vénus in Rameau’s Dardanus with Opéra National de Bordeaux; L’Eternità/Giunone in La Calisto with the Bayerische Staatsoper; the title role in Armide with De Nederlandse Opera; Armida in Handel’s Rinaldo at the Glyndebourne Festival; the title role of Handel’s Alcina with Les Talens Lyriques; and Ariadne in Georg Conradi’s Die Schöne und getreue Ariadne for the Boston Early Music Festival. She performed in Vivaldi’s Tito Manlio in Brussels and at the Barbican in London; Fulvio in Handel’s Ezio in Paris and Vienna; the title role in Giulio Cesare in Paris and Vienna; and the title role in Vivaldi’s Juditha Triumphans with Andrea Marcon at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. She has also sung Seleuce in Handel's Tolomeo with Alan Curtis, with whom she recorded Handel operas on ARCHIV/Deutsche Grammophon, Virgin, and Naïve labels, among others. Her recorded performances with the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra have earned her two nominations from the Grammy Awards.
On the concert stage, memorable performances include the Princess in Ravel’s L'enfant et les sortilèges with the Rotterdam Philharmonic under Yannick Nézet-Séguin; Bach’s St. John Passion and Handel’s Solomon with Les Violons du Roy; Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Debussy’s The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian and Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.
Gauvin has an extensive discography—over 30 titles—and she has won numerous awards, including a Chamber Music America Award for Fête Galante with pianist Marc-André Hamelin, and several Opus Prizes. Other recording projects include a European tour and a recording of Handel’s Ariodante for EMI Virgin Classics; a European tour and a recording of Giulio Cesare for the Naïve House, both with Alan Curtis and Il Complesso Barocco; and Britten’s Les Illuminations with Les Violons du Roy under the direction of Jean-Marie Zeitouni. In addition, she has completed an album in honor of Anna Maria Strada del Po, with Alexander Weimann and the Arion Ensemble. The album received 2025 Juno Award nominations.
About The Haymarket Review: This digital publication including thoughts about the work produced by Haymarket is designed to deepen our connection to audiences, nurture and feed audience curiosity about historical performance, offer critical opinions and thoughtful reflections on our performances, and provide a forum for Haymarket and its audience to connect through sharing insights, opinions, learning, and expertise.