parterre box

22 comments

• NYCOQ says:

  Truly one of the greats. I only know her work through recordings. My entry into live performances was a little past her time, but her Handel and Mahler cds set the standard for me. Not to mention her recording of Cornelia with La Sills and Triegle on the a live recording of Cesare. Love, love, love her. Absolute class and elegance. It is sad how her finals years ended; RIP dear Maureen.

  on June 17, 2010 at 5:06 PM
• gerbear says:

  As a teenager, my parents and I attended a concert one Saturday night by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra with Maureen Forrester as guest artist. She was so amazing, both in terms of musicality and stage presence, that I just had to return Sunday afternoon to see and hear her again. A few years later, I remember loving her in a CBC broadcast of a Gilbert and Sullivan musical she’d originally done at the Stratford festival. My memory of the simple dignity with which she sang at the memorial service for Glenn Gould also stands out. But the biggest highlight came many years later, in the summer of 1993. Minnesota Orchestra has a tradition of ending its summer season with an opera in concert performance, and that year it was Bernstein’s Candide with Tracy Dahl and Maureen Forrester. I had the incredible good fortune to be in the chorus for that concert and was tremendously thrilled to meet her. As a Canadian, it was extraordinary to be on the same stage with these two major Canadian singers, one more from the past and the other more from current operatic glories, and I remember thinking that probably most in the audience were utterly unaware of what these two represented.

  on June 17, 2010 at 5:44 PM
• Donna Anna says:

  She sang Uhrlicht with the Cincinnati Symphony in 1983, I believe. It was everything everyone else has said and more. She was totally in control and made it the sublime melody that it is.
  And what a delightful presence onstage and off.
  I am grateful for her voice and for her life.

  on June 17, 2010 at 6:18 PM
• charmian kerr says:

  An amusing encounter I had with the marvelous M.F. -

  the Time: 1991
  the Place: onstage at Boston Symphony Hall
  the Work: Pique Dame by Tchaikovsky, in a staging rehearsal
  the Cast: Me, a bass, playing a gambler.
  Maureen Forrester, the legendary contralto in the last twilight of her wonderful career, as the ghost of the ancient, palsied Countess who makes a spectacularly creepy appearance at the end of the opera.

  Me: [lounging on my backside on the scenery during a break]
  “You certainly do make a scary ghost, Miss Forrester.”
  Mo: [immediately striking a wraith-like pose with chin raised, one eyebrow aloft, and peering at me through squinting eyes]
  “Why, yes…I am preparing for my comeback!”

  on June 17, 2010 at 7:19 PM
• Harry says:

  There are some that are an artist …….and then there are others that were – the complete artist. The latter type was Maureen Forrester. A voice rich, full, secure and even, across its entire spectrum. 2010 has been a lousy year: losing too many singers that brought joy into our lives.

  on June 17, 2010 at 8:06 PM
• sfmike says:

  She was a goddess. There’s an autobiography out there which she wrote in the early 1980s that is worth searching out. It’s funny, frank and a fascinating look at music, politics, and sex in the middle of the twentieth century.

  on June 18, 2010 at 1:22 PM