Judith Forst

Canadian mezzo-soprano Judith Forst has sung with most major opera companies throughout North America including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Dallas Opera, New York City Opera and the Vancouver Opera Association. European engagements have included performances in England, Germany, France, and Spain.

Ms. Forst's most recent successes have included performances of Kostelnicka in Janacek's Jenufa with the Montreal Opera Company, Stravinski's Oedipus Rex with the Canadian Opera Company (Toronto), Marie in Wozzeck, Herodias in Salome and Gertrude in Hamlet with the San Francisco Opera; Dialogues of the Carmelites with New York’s Metropolitan Opera and the Vancouver Opera Association; and World Premieres of both Les Liaisons Dangereuses with the San Francisco Opera Company, and of Valentino with the Washington (DC) Opera Company.

Recent and upcoming performances (1998) include productions of Jenufa in Cincinnati; Salome in Vancouver, and Arabella in San Francisco. She also performed this year with the Dallas Opera in a new production of Janacek's Katya Kabanova, a role she will repeat this winter at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. 1998 will mark the issuing of her third CD: Modern Canadian Music.

1998 will see yet another milestone in Ms. Forst's career as she will perform in her fifth world premiere: Andre Previn’s A Streetcar Name Desire.

In 1991, Ms. Forst received an honourary Doctorate of Letters from U.B.C., the first performing artist alumna to be so honoured, and in 1995, the University Victoria conferred upon Ms. Forst an Honourary Doctorate of Music. In 1992, Forst, who has been the subject of two full-length nationally televised biographies, was inducted into the Order of Canada.

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