“Karina Gauvin is the incarnation of a Cleopatra through songs with haunting modulations… This Queen of Egypt who expresses her delicately shaded laments on the borders of silence…” (Diapason)
Recognized for her work in the Baroque repertoire, Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin sings Bach, Mahler, Britten and the music of the 20th and 21st centuries with equal success.
Mrs Gauvin has sung with the world’s leading symphony orchestras, including the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the San Francisco Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the New York Philharmonic and the Rotterdam Philharmonic, as well as Baroque orchestras such as 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 Charles Dutoit, Michael Tilson Thomas, Michel Plasson, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Mikko Frank, Teodor Currentzis, Bernard Labadie, Christophe Rousset, Sir Roger Norrington, Kent Nagano, Jérémie Rhorer and the late Alan Curtis among others.
In 2015, she sang Vitellia in Mozart’s Clemenza di Tito at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris (J. Rohrer/D. Podalydès) and Armida in Handel’s Rinaldo (O. Dantone/R. Carsen) at the Glyndebourne Festival. The year before she was Armide in Gluck’s Armide (I. Bolton/B. Kosky) at the Netherlands Opera and Giunone in Cavalli’s Calisto at the Bayerische Staatsoper.
In 2017, Karina Gauvin made a much-lauded interpretation of Vitellia at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in La Clemenza di Tito under the direction of Teodor Courrentzis and appeared as Duchesse d’Étampes in Camille Saint-Saëns’ long-lost opera Ascanio conducted by Guillaume Tourniaire at the Grand Théâtre de Genève. In 2018, she performed a recital of French melodies at both the Lille Opera and Wigmore Hall.
Other past projects include a European tour and a recording of Ariodante (Handel) for EMI Virgin Classics, along with a European tour and a recording of Giulio Cesare, both with Alan Curtis and Il Complesso Barocco. She sang in the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian and the Symphony No. 2 (Mahler) with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. Karina Gauvin was Lia in Debussy’s Enfant prodigue with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Mikko Frank later released on the Erato label.
