Maureen Forrester

Maureen Forrester was born in Montreal in July 1930, the youngest of four children in a working-class Scottish-Irish family. She left school at thirteen to work and supported her own vocal training, studying with Sally Martin and Frank Rowe in Montreal and (after a Canadian touring breakthrough) with Bernard Diamant. She made her American début at Town Hall, New York, in 1956, the year of her marriage to the violinist Eugene Kash.

She became one of the leading contraltos of the international concert and recital circuit through the 1960s and 1970s. Her central repertoire was the great German concert and oratorio works — Bach’s *St Matthew Passion*, Handel’s *Messiah*, Brahms’s *Alto Rhapsody*, the Mahler symphonies (particularly the Second, Third and the *Resurrection*, where her partnerships with Bernstein, Solti and Bruno Walter defined the post-war Mahler revival). She sang opera less often but distinctively: Erda and Fricka in the Wagner cycles, the Witch in *Hänsel und Gretel*, Verdi’s Mistress Quickly. She made over 150 recordings across a four-decade career and was a tireless advocate of contemporary Canadian composers.

Forrester was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1990 and won the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award. She died in Toronto in June 2010. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of her Mahler, oratorio and concert work.