Maria Knapik (centre) in Halka at the Polish National Opera. Photo courtesy of Maria Knapik.

The news that Friday’s air crash in Russia took so many lives of Poland’s government leadership is tragic. For Maria Knapik, it is devastating. Perhaps Ottawa’s most diva-esque soprano, Knapik grew up in Poland as a member of the country’s best-known singing family, the Knapik Sisters. She’s lived in Ottawa for almost 20 years but her ties to a country that taught her about fame and collaboration remain intense. Her upcoming appearance at the National Arts Centre will be dedicated to the memory of those who died.

It will be particularly touching for Knapik when she appears tomorrow night (April 12) on stage with the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra at the National Arts Centre to sing Elegia, written specifically for her by Peter Paul Koprowsky, another Polish immigrant who’s always seen Knapik as an ambassador for their home country. The concert focuses on Polish music.

Her emotional ride won’t let up this month. On April 29 she’s teamed with the Polish Canadian Women’s Federation for a concert at Centretown United Church in aid of survivors of Chile’s massive earthquake in late February. The lineup she’s organized is nothing short of phenomenal: Julie Nesrallah, Elena Denisova, Alexei Kornienko, Andrzej Stec , Javor Dimitrov, Shawne Elizabeth, James O’Farrell and Jean-Eudes Vaillancourt. Others are still being added.

Knapik organizes two charity concerts of this caliber each year and performs in several others, a continuation of her childhood when the Knapik Sisters would raise money for Polish orphans, and each year would find a summer-vacation spot for one in their home. She remembers the genesis of rights and duties in her mind when she first saw Rigoletto. “When the duke says every woman is the same, I couldn’t stand it. I have a very strong sense of justice.”

She’s consumed with this old-world sensibility and spoke about it at length the last time I interviewed her at home. She also insisted I eat the full lunch she had prepared while four months pregnant, another old-world touch that gives a glimpse beyond our new-world’s self-obsession. And she explained about her childhood.

The Knapik Sisters – 10 in all, including parents – were compared to a Polish Von Trapp family. I found a better analogy: The Jackson Five, albeit in embroidered velvet dresses and without the tyrannical father. People would hang off ladders to see in venue windows where the family performed, about 2,800 concerts in all. They were the subject of 20 films, some available on the Internet, and Knapik swears the family never got swelled heads. It wasn’t a normal childhood, but it was filled with what Knapik calls “an incredible sense of appreciation and belonging.”

She made the difficult switch to a solo career in her late teens at Krakow’s Karol Szymanowski Academy of Vocal and Acting Arts., difficult because when she started winning singing contests, she started losing friends. The Knapik family meant “becoming your best strengthens the whole group,” and today in Ottawa her work is “a collaboration with friends, not a battle for attention.” Her resume offers proof; her diva status comes with an asterisk – “not difficult to work with.”

Those mourning Friday’s air crash don’t need charity; they just need to know the world hasn’t abandoned them completely. Monday at the NAC, Maria Knapik and the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra will contribute one reminder.