Karina Gauvin - Handel: ALCINA, Si son quella (Alcina aria #2), Montreal 2004

Описание: THE SONGBIRD: Born 1966 in Quebec, Karina Gauvin's parents were both professionally trained opera singers. Gauvin joined the Canadian Children's Opera Chorus at the age of 8. As a teenager she began to study singing mezzo Catherine Robbin in Toronto, and several years later entered the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal. She won First Prize at the CBC Radio National Competition in 1995, among other competition wins. Gauvin made her professional opera debut in Glimmerglass in 1996. While she has performed operatic roles on stage, mostly baroque works, her primary focus has been concerts and recitals and she has sung with many of the leading orchestras around the world and has become a prolific recording artist.

THE MUSIC: I'm posting various singers doing the arias for the two leading soprano roles in "Alcina" -- this is Alcina's second of six arias. (Gauvin is so exquisite in this role that I've shared her doing two of Alcina’s arias; this one and the previously posted "Di', cor mio")

"Alcina" was composed for Handel's first season at Covent Garden in London and premiered in 1735. The opera soon fell into obscurity and was not performed again until a production in Leipzig in 1928, followed by occasional revivals and recordings that have since grown the opera's reputation; today it is one of Handel's most popular and widely produced. It's one of his "magic" operas with sorcery and spells woven throughout the plot. Alcina and Morgana are sisters and both sorceresses who fall in love with mortals who trick them. Alcina may be Handel's greatest soprano role. This intimate and very exposed aria, "Si, son quella!" slowly unspools as Alcina sings alluringly to her jealous lover Ruggiero that she is faithful, and broken to her core that he would doubt her affection for him.