Singers: Something to Go Home To

The New York City Opera’s opening production of Handel’s Julius Caesar last week was just minutes old when Contralto Maureen Forrester fixed hand to forehead, shuddered “Woe unto me,” and fainted dead away. Contralto roles are like that, full of weeping and despair, the tragic counterweights that support the romantic leads. Forrester, making her U.S. operatic debut, flawlessly performed the role of Cornelia, effortlessly pouring out great billows of plum-shaded singing that served as a lush backdrop for the vocal scrollwork of the other principal singers. Where they thrilled, she caressed. Predictably, the heaviest applause went to Soprano Beverly Sills as Cleopatra and Bass-Baritone Norman Treigle as Caesar.

Maureen Forrester didn’t mind. She long ago resigned herself to the fact that, woe unto her, the contralto in opera is the unsung singer. Of the precious few roles available to the contralto, most are skimpy caricatures of degenerate kings—roles written in olden times for castrati—or “the other woman.” “In opera,” she says, “the high-frequency voice has it. A contralto has to sing the whole night before anyone is impressed.” It is just as well. Forrester is 5 ft. 9 in. and weighs 180 Ibs.; there are not many male singers who could make a believable partner. If she thought about it, she says wistfully, she could “feel slighted.”

Meanwhile, she has nicer things to think about. Long recognized as one of the world’s leading contraltos, Forrester, 36, earns $100,000 a year singing classical songs at $2,500 a performance.

Opera is enjoyable, she says, “but I could have sung six concerts in the time it took to rehearse Julius Caesar.” In a recital, the rich tonalities of her deep velvet voice come to full bloom, lending breadth and a somber ecstasy to a Mahler song, a wry twist to a Hugo Wolf lied.

“Our Song.” The ash-blonde daughter of a Montreal cabinetmaker, Forrester has a temperament to match her warm contralto. She is a big bundle of Scotch-Irish joviality, relaxes before a performance almost to the point of limpness. “Nervousness is bad for the breathing,” she explains. Besides, “I don’t have to live my reviews. I have something else to go home to”—meaning a husband, Canadian Conductor-Violinist Eugene Kash, and five children, aged two to ten. While most female opera singers shun childbirth for fear that it will some how hurt their voices, Mama Maureen insists that it has extended her range by 21 notes on top and 21 on the bottom, “one for each baby.” She travels ten months of the year, with bookings arranged so that she can pop home to Toronto. In one recent six-day period, she jetted from San Francisco to Toronto to New Orleans to Vienna to Puerto Rico to Vienna to Toronto. In addition, she stops off twice a month to teach at Philadelphia’s Musical Academy, where she is chairman of the voice department. In her spare time she embroiders and collects thimbles.

Forrester confesses that she accepted the role in Julius Caesar because Handel is a special favorite. Her first date with her husband-to-be followed a performance of Handel’s Messiah in which she was one of the soloists. Says she: “Ever since, Whenever we hear the Messiah we say, ‘Listen—they’re playing our song.’ “