Marie Hubert – Fille du Roy is the latest recording by the renowned Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin. This intriguing album brings the folklores of Quebec and France to life using song to recount the experiences of Marie Hubert, one of the Filles du Roy (the King’s daughters) intended to help populate New France. Recruited as one of almost 800 marriageable French young women, Marie crossed the Atlantic at the end of the program, which was launched in 1670 by the Roi-Soleil, King Louis XIV, and Jean Talon, his intendant in New France. For nearly a decade, Karina Gauvin had been yearning to record a selection of Québécois and French folk songs. Quite fortuitously, recent genealogical research has traced Gauvin’s family origins to Marie Hubert. In the midst of pandemic lockdowns, Gauvin examined the contents of an old chest of drawers and unearthed some scores handed down more than 30 years earlier by the aptly named soprano, Louise Roy. Among these treasures were folk harmonizations from the first half of the twentieth century by such eminent Canadian musicians as Gabriel Cusson, Ernest MacMillan, Michel Perrault, and Oscar O’Brien, to name just a few. Going through these scores with pianist Pierre McLean, Gauvin selected the songs for this new album, which feature orchestrations by Claude Lapalme and two arrangements for piano and harpsichord by Pierre McLean. From Belle rose du printemps to Gai lon la, gai le rosier, and from Isabeau s’y promene to Les cloches du hameau, Karina Gauvin brings rich colors to these folk songs in new arrangements for strings, winds, harp, and piano by Claude Lapalme, with Pierre McLean (piano), Valérie Milot (harp), Étienne Lafrance (double bass), Quatuor Molinari, and Pentaedre.

What a charming album! Soprano Karina Gauvin plunges deep into Quebec’s roots with this beautifully coloured tribute to her ancestor, a certain Marie Hubert, who arrived in New France in 1670, married the same year and had 5 children who would in turn spread across this new French-speaking nation in America.

We follow the orphan Marie Hubert from her poverty-stricken Parisian neighbourhood, from which she escaped thanks to the Filles du Roy programme (King Louis XIV gave money and free travel to New France for ‘’well-mannered and beautiful’’ young orphans under his protection in exchange for populating the new colony). Thanks to a made-up diary written by Karina Gauvin, we can follow her simple but all-to-familiar story: an arduous crossing, her long-awaited arrival, a quick marriage to a good man who worked hard and loved her, a large family, courageous clearing of this demanding country, harsh winters, the death of her husband who was older than she was, and a successful remarriage. In the end, we lose track of her in the echoes of a history that has never done much justice to the humble like Marie Hubert. But Karina Gauvin, her illustrious descendant, takes her hat off to her here with remarkable mastery.

In a repertoire of folk songs as endearing as they are famous (Isabeau s’y promene, Ah, toi belle hirondelle, Vive la Canadienne), Karina takes the listener on a touching journey through time, at times danceable, at times melancholy, brought to life by arrangements bursting with colour and rich counterpoint. Bravo to Claude Lapalme and Pierre McLean for these creations worthy of Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne!

Karina Gauvin gives it her all, with a vocal ease reminiscent of her memorable interpretation of Canteloube’s folk-romantic corpus. The accompaniment could hardly be better: the Molinari Quartet for the strings (with the addition of Étienne Lafrance on double bass), the Pentaedre ensemble for the winds, Valérie Milot on harp and Pierre McLean, piano and harpsichord. It’s perfection!

Long live this magnificent cycle of songs steeped in our historical Quebecois soil!