Born to parents of Scottish-Irish descent, Maureen Forrester left school at thirteen to help support her family. While working as a secretary she paid for her own voice lessons with Sally Martin, the English tenor Frank Rowe and the Dutch baritone Bernard Diamant. After performing Elgar’s The Music Makers in concert with the Montreal Elgar Choir in 1951, Forrester made her recital debut in Montreal in 1953, accompanied by pianist John Newmark, after which she toured Canada. Her European recital debut in Paris, also with Newmark, came in 1955 and was followed by numerous appearances in Europe.
Having given a highly-praised recital at New York’s Town Hall in 1956, Forrester came to the attention of Bruno Walter, who coached her in the interpretation of Mahler’s music. With Walter conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, she sang in Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 ‘Resurrection’ in 1957 and Das Lied von der Erde in 1960. From the late 1950s onwards Forrester enjoyed a busy concert career across North America and Europe, giving as many as 120 concerts a year, often with conductors such as Barbirolli, Beecham, Bernstein, Casals, Karajan, Klemperer, Krips, Levine, MacMillan, Ozawa, Reiner, Sargent, Stokowski and Szell.
Forrester’s formal operatic stage debut was as Gluck’s Orfeo in Toronto in 1963, which was followed in 1966 by Cornelia in Handel’s Julius Caesar at the New York City Opera alongside Beverly Sills. She expanded her operatic activity significantly during the 1970s: major assignments included Fricka / Die Walküre (1971, Canadian Opera Company), Madame Flora / The Medium (Stratford Festival, 1974), Erda / Das Rheingold (Metropolitan Opera, New York, 1975), the Countess / The Queen of Spades (Festival Ottawa, 1976 and La Scala, Milan, 1990), Madame de la Haltière / Cendrillon (San Francisco, 1982), Klytaemnestra / Elektra (Canadian Opera, 1983) and Mme de Croissy / Dialogues des Carmélites (Canadian Opera, 1986).
In addition to her concert and operatic activity Forrester enjoyed teaching: from 1966 to 1971 she was head of the vocal department at the Philadelphia Academy of Music and often gave master-classes alongside her recitals. Between 1983 and 1988 she served as chairman of the Canada Council for the Arts.
During the 1990s Forrester reduced her schedule to around fifty engagements annually and with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease she performed progressively less frequently. Following her last public appearance, in Toronto in 2001, she resided in a nursing home in Toronto until her death. Forrester possessed a sumptuous contralto voice which she used with great musicianship and, as her career developed, with considerable versatility.
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