Judith Forst

Judith Forst was born in New Westminster, November 71943. She studied piano as a child and voice later with at the University of British Columbia, and was coached by Harold Brown. A participant 1966-8 in the Vancouver Opera Association training program, Forst won the 1967 western finals of the San Francisco Opera auditions and the 1968 CBC Talent Festival. A 1968 audition for the Metropolitan Opera led to a contract and her debut there that same year. Forst lived 1968-75 in New York where she performed as a regular member of the Metropolitan Opera. In 1975 she returned to Vancouver. Forst sang Hansel in the CBC’s 1970 TV production of Hansel and Gretel and made her COC debut in 1972 as Olga in Eugene Onegin. She made her San Francisco Opera debut in 1974 as Suzuki in Madama Butterfly. She sang Jane Seymour in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena with Joan Sutherland in the title role for the COC in 1984. In 1985 she made her European debut in Paris in a concert performance of Les Contes d’Hoffmann and in 1988 made her debut in Munich in La Forza del Destino. Forst appeared in Vancouver operas and in the operatic productions of Festival Ottawa and Opera Lyra Ottawa. In 1988 she sang in the premiere of Rudolf Komorous’ opera No No Miya for the Vancouver New Music Society and in 1989 she premiered Malcolm Forsyth’s Sun Songs with the Calgary Philharmonic. Among her many other COC roles, she created the part of Pamphilea for the 1999 world premiere of The Golden Ass (by Randolph Peters and Robertson Davies). With the Metropolitan Opera in 2001, she took on the role of the Witch in Hansel and Gretel, singing the part again with the Arizona Opera the following year. For the Met, Vancouver Opera and Netherlands Opera, she sang Madame de Croissy in Dialogues of the Carmelites. She appeared often for San Francisco Opera, including in the world premieres of Conrad Susa’s Dangerous Liaisons (1994). In 2003 Forst appeared as Klytemnestra in the Vancouver premiere of Elektra. She was also a frequent guest instructor at the University of British Columbia. Forst is called ‘one of the few truly world class coloratura mezzo-sopranos on the operatic stage,’ with a voice that is ‘bright, sensuous, seamless through its range, full of secure, shining high notes’ (COC Magazine Apr 1988).