Karina Gauvin gave Tuesday evening at the Classica Festival in Boucherville, the highly anticipated first performance of her show Marie Hubert — Daughter of the King, a natural variation of the record released last April by ATMA. The transposition to the stage is sober and effective.
We had some fears when we saw “show with intermission” written on the program. How was Karina Gauvin going to be able to maintain the narrative thread with a break in the middle? It has not happened. Fortunately, because the realization of Marie Hubert — Daughter of the King in the form of a show, Karina Gauvin’s “pandemic project”, links the various folk songs with a story, that of the journey of Marie Hubert, ancestor of Karina Gauvin. First her hopes, then her very long and hard journey, her arrival, her search for a husband, her marriage, the birth of her children, the hard work, her widowhood and her remarriage.
The narrative sections are enlightening links that are not too long (for the stories of dates, however, you have to concentrate and follow) and to give the singer a few rest periods, two songs, one at the end of the first third and the other at the end of the second, are played in the form of instrumental interludes.
Beautiful ending
The final section is particularly successful, poignant with the episode of labor (The Plowman), the death of Nicolas, the husband (More morning than the moon) and the final pirouette with the remarriage (I danced so much Then Long live the Canadian).
We find “in real life” the simple joys provided by the record, in particular this atmosphere of folklore elevated by successful harmonizations and arrangements by Claude Lapalme, made in a Canteloube vein for a more malleable, “transportable” and intimate ensemble, the arranger and conductor who can count, in practice, on involved and fair musicians.
There was another possible choice: for Karina Gauvin to work on the project with a narrator to spare her voice (the spoken voice is the worst enemy of the singing voice, they say). If she went on tour giving this show eight times in ten days, we could not say that playing both roles (narrator and singer) would be the optimal solution. But his narration was intelligible and clear, an intelligibility which drops a notch when Gauvin switches to singing. But not everyone can have the “laser” pronunciation of Marie-Nicole Lemieux.
This beautiful and original show was filmed. While its future success in Quebec seems certain, it will be interesting to see if it will interest other French-speaking countries.