Maureen Forrester

Canada's foremost contralto, Maureen Forrester, launched her vocal training under Sally Martin in Montreal before continuing with Frank Rowe and Bernard Diamant. She stepped onto the professional stage for the first time in a 1953 Montreal recital and soon formed a lasting partnership with pianist John Newmark that endured until his death in 1991. A Paris recital in 1955 preceded her New York debut the following year; that performance caught the ear of Bruno Walter, who immediately engaged her for the contralto solos in Mahler's Second Symphony with the New York Philharmonic. The ensuing appearance launched her worldwide reputation, as Walter hailed her as a singular interpreter of Mahler's music. In those formative years she devoted herself chiefly to concerts and recitals. Her first major operatic engagement occurred in 1962 when she appeared in Toronto in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. Two years later she made her New York City Opera debut as Cornelia in Handel's Giulio Cesare alongside Beverly Sills and Norman Treigle. The Metropolitan Opera heard her for the first time in 1975 when she sang Erda in Das Rheingold. Audiences and critics alike praised her comic gifts in roles such as the Step-Mother in Massenet's Cendrillon, the Witch in Hansel and Gretel, and the Fairy Queen in Sullivan's Iolanthe at Stratford. Later she became closely associated with the Countess in Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades and with Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites.

Between 1965 and 1974 she belonged to the Bach Aria Group and traveled extensively with it throughout the United States and Canada. Her solo recital itinerary eventually circled the globe; a tireless advocate for Canadian composers, she routinely programmed their songs and gave special prominence to Fleming's The Confession Stone. Although her orchestral repertoire spanned Bach and Pergolesi on one end and Elgar and Casals on the other, she is most indelibly linked with Mahler, above all the Second Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde. Forrester possessed a dark, richly timbred contralto that nevertheless moved freely into the upper register, enabling her to undertake mezzo-soprano parts such as the Verdi Requiem and Brangäne in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. Despite its size, the voice retained remarkable agility, which fueled demand for her services in the oratorios of Bach and Handel as well as works by other Baroque masters wherever she performed. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s she maintained a schedule of roughly 120 concerts annually while raising five children.

She took pleasure in teaching and directed the voice department at the Philadelphia Academy of Music from 1966 to 1971. After that appointment she maintained a private studio in Toronto and offered master classes tied to her recital engagements. In 1983 she assumed the chairmanship of the Canada Council for the Arts for a five-year term. That same year saw the publication of her autobiography, Out of Character, and her appointment as a Companion of the Order of Canada. Throughout an extensive career Forrester remained among the preeminent contraltos of the twentieth century.