Marthe Forget

Marthe Forget, soprano, stage director, teacher (born 25 February 1935 in Ste-Agathe-des-Monts, QC; died 16 December 2006 in Saint-Charles-Borromée, QC). Premier prix art lyrique (CMM) 1955, M MUS (Montreal) 1974, D MUS (Paris) 1979. She received her first music lessons from her mother. She was educated at St-Jérôme, Que, and at the same time continued her musical training. She studied 1952-5 at the CMM with Yvonne Hubert, Gilberte Martin, Jean Papineau-Couture, and Martial Singher and in 1955 she received an award from Les Amis de l'art. During a stay in Europe on a Canada Council grant she was a soloist in Bach's St John Passion in Bayreuth in August 1960. She sang 1961-8 with the Opéra de chambre de l'Île-de-France. After her return to Canada she performed in the premieres of Papineau-Couture's Chanson de Rahit (University of Montreal's late evening concerts, the Nocturnales; also on CBC radio) and Saint-Marcoux's Ishuma (performed and also recorded, RCI 422/5-ACM 18, with the SMCQ Ensemble). In 1970 she began teaching at the University of Montreal where she directed a workshop in stage technique which produced notably, Monteverdi's Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda in 1975, Somers' The Fool in 1976, Claude Vivier's Kopernikus (world premiere 1980) and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas in 1986. During a sabbatical 1976-8 she wrote her doctoral thesis, "L'Esthétique du récitatif à l'époque contemporaine." In 1985, she founded a musical theatre company, La Tarasque, which presented Poe-Debussy, Autour de la maison Usher at Centaur Theatre in Montreal (1988), a multi-media production conceived and staged by Forget, with video images by Richard Martin and electronic music by Francis Dhomont.