Sunday Classics: Remembering Maureen Forrester, Part 1: A bulwark of the baroque revival

As the poster notes, YouTube's 10-minute-plus time limit doesn't accommodate the whole of "He was despised," the great alto aria from Handel's Messiah (which we talked about and heard in this past Christmas's Messiah post). The poster can't recall what CD it's from; I assume it's a reissue of the Vanguard Bach-Handel recital, with Antonio Janigro conducting I Solisti di Zagreb (which I don't have), presumably also the original source of the aria below from Handel's Samson.

by Ken

In last night's preview I described contralto Maureen Forrester (1930-2010) as "one of the least replaceable singers" I've heard, and looking back, I'm a little surprised how casually her presence was taken on the musical scene. (For the record, we also had a non-preview "down payment" pre-preview week before last.) She wasn't quite taken for granted, but the vocal completeness of her performances of whatever repertory she was plunked into was such that she came perilously close, and she seemed so unfailingly just to be there, when and where she was needed, that I don't think many music lovers gave much thought to what it would be like when that presence was no longer present, with no replacement available.

Case in point: perhaps the best-known tune Handel left us, known as "Handel's Largo" -- in context, as sung by the Persian emperor Xerxes at curtain rise, a love song to a tree.

HANDEL: Serse: Act I, "Frondi tenere . . . Ombra mai fù"

RECITATIVE
Tender and fair leaves
of my beloved plane tree,
may Fate shine on you.
May thunder, lightning and storms
never disturb your dear peace
or any other predator
manage to despoil you.

ARIA: Serse
Never was shade
of vegetation
more dear and
endearingly comforting.

Maureen Forrester, contralto; Vienna Radio Orchestra, Brian Priestman, cond. Westminster/CBC, recorded June 1965

This "Ombra mai fù" is from a complete recording of Serse undertaken by Westminster as a follow-up to its recording the year before of Handel's Rodelinda (with Teresa Stich-Randall in the title role). Not surprisingly, Forrester was in the cast of both. Although by present-day Handel performance standards those recordings sound like unalloyed treasures, response to them at the time was understandably mixed, making Westminster unable to continue the series. (A recording of the English-language "musical drama" Hercules, again with Stich-Randall and Forrester, was released by RCA, and even less well-received.) Similarly, when Vanguard launched a series of Handel oratorios with the shockingly neglected late masterpieces Theodora and Jephtha, Forrester was in the casts. It was an obvious "ask" for the record companies.

Sadly, for an artist who recorded as much as Forrester, hardly anything remains in print, and we have to be grateful for a two-CD set put together by CBC Records, A Legendary Voice: Maureen Forrester (pay no attention to the unfortunate French album title, La Voix du Siècle, "The Voice of the Century") -- a CD of Handel compiled from assorted Westminster and Vanguard originals attached to a CD reissuing CBC's own March 1968 coupling of Brahms's Four Serious Songs and Wagner's Wesendonck-Lieder (once released by Decca), filled out with song material from a January 1981 Toronto recital. (The performance we heard two weeks ago of Brahms's "Lullaby" was, as noted, an encore from the 1981 recital.)

From the CBC anthology, here's Micah's great aria from the oratorio Samson.

HANDEL: Samson: Act II, "Return, o God of hosts"

Return, o God of hosts! Behold
thy servant in distress!
His mighty griefs redress,
nor by the heathen be it told.

Maureen Forrester, contralto; I Solisti di Zagreb, Antonio Janigro, cond. Vanguard/CBC, recorded c1964

Among the Handel projects of her time for which Forrester was an obvious choice was the now-legendary New York City Opera production of Julius Caesar in a version prepared by the company's general director Julius Rudel, who also conducted the production. The role of Cleopatra made an "overnight" star of the (in reality) long-toiling Beverly Sills, with an equally gripping performance by bass-baritone Norman Treigle in the title role. Thank goodness RCA chose to make a recording based on the production.

Last night we heard Forrester singing one of Cleopatra's arias, "Piangerò la mia sorte," rightfully a soprano or mezzo-soprano role. For the City Opera production Rudel had the good sense to ask her to sing the important role of Cornelia.

HANDEL: Julius Caesar, Act I, recitative and aria, "Priva son d'ogni conforto" ("I am deprived of every consolation")

RECITATIVE
[It has been a great military triumph for Caesar in Egypt, with the defeat of his former ally but now rival, Pompei. To his horror, though, he has been presented by his Egyptian hosts with the great general's severed head -- this in the presence of Pompei's wife, suddenly widow, Cornelia and their son Sextus. Cornelia promptly fainted, and following the exit of the enraged Caesar, his aide de camp Curio picks this curious, not to mention wildly inappropriate, time to go a-courting the new widow.]
CURIO: She's coming to now.
SEXTUS: Mother!
CURIO: Cornelia!
CORNELIA: O stars! And I'm still alive?
[She tries to wrest Sextus' sword away from him.]
CURIO [restraining CORNELIA]: Stop! In vain you seek
to stain your weapon
with blood in that breast.
Curio, who still adores you,
and wants you as his wife, if only you'll accept,
will know how to avenge you
with his sword.
CORNELIA: Your wife?
CURIO: Yes.
CORNELIA: Silence yourself!
SEXTUS: Mother!
CORNELIA: My flesh!
SEXTUS: What shall we do now?

ARIA: Cornelia
I am deprived of every consolation,
and yet there is no hope for death
for me, wretched one.
My heart, engulfed with pain,
is already weary of suffering,
and death denies itself to me.

Maureen Forrester (c), Cornelia; Beverly Wolff (ms), Sextus; William Beck (b), Curio; New York City Opera Orchestra, Julius Rudel, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded April-May 1967

Given the sparse representation of Forrester on current records, the ample contributions of the YouTubers are indispensable. At the top of this post we have that amazing performance of "He was despised," or most of it, thanks to the YouTube time limitation. And for a representation of Forrester's important Bach repertory we have to turn to YouTube. Here is the great alto aria "Bereite dich, Zion" ("Prepare thyself, Zion") from the Christmas Oratorio.

BACH: Christmas Oratorio: Part I, No. 4, "Bereite dich, Zion" ("Prepare thyself, Zion")

Prepare thyself, Zion,
with tender desire
the fairest and dearest
to behold with thee soon.

Thy cheeks today must
much lovelier shine!
Hasten most ardently
the Bridegroom to love.

Maureen Forrester, contralto; I Solisti di Zagreb, Antonio Janigro, cond. Vanguard/CBC, recorded c1964

In 1965 Forrester became the alto soloist of the Bach Aria Group, whose pioneering resurrection of Bach's vast aria repertory we talked about here. The idea of the group's founder, William H. Scheide, you'll recall, is that Bach's arias, while vocal solos, are in fact generally duets -- in the case of this performance (taken from a retrospective series devoted to the great oboist Robert Bloom, a member of the Bach Aria Group throughout its 34-year run, 1946-1980), a duet for alto and oboe.

BACH: Cantata No. 79: No. 2, "Gott is unsre Sonn' und Schild" ("God is our sun and shield")

God is our sun and shield!
Therefore our thankful heart
praises His goodness,
which he reserves for His little band.
For He will protect us further,
though the enemies sharpen their arrows
and a blaspheming dog howls.

Bach Aria Group: Maureen Forrester, contralto; Robert Bloom, oboe; Bernard Greenhouse, cello; Paul Ulanowsky, piano. Boston Records, recorded live in Town Hall, New York, Dec. 7, 1966

ENCORE: A BIT MORE BRAHMS

Don't ask me how this fits in with our chapter on "the baroque Forrester." It doesn't. It just happens that I made an audio file of this last of the Brahms Four Serious Songs which I wound up not using in last night's preview, and I think it would be a shame to waste it.

BRAHMS: Four Serious Songs: No. 4, "Wenn ich mit Menschen- und mit Engelszungen redete" ("Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels")

Though I speak with the tongues
of men and of angels,
and have not charity,
I am become as sounding brass,
or a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy,
and understand all mysteries,
and all knowledge;
and though I have all faith,
so that I could move mountains,
and have not charity, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods
to feed the poor,
and though I give my body to be burned,
and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

For now we see through a glass darkly,
but then face to face:
now I know in part;
but then shall I know even as also I am known.

And now abideth faith, hope, charity,
these three;
but the greatest of these is charity.

-- I Corinthians, XIII:1-3,12-13

Maureen Forrester, contralto; John Newmark, piano. CBC, recorded March 1-9, 1968

(Also in the realm of the baroque, last night we heard Forrester in one of her select operatic roles, Gluck's Orfeo, singing "Che farò senza Euridice." One of these days -- like when I acquire the technical competence to digitize LPs -- we'll hear some of her complete Vanguard recording conducted by Charles Mackerras, and maybe a bunch of other stuff as well.)


IN TOMORROW'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST --

Finally, Mahler. As noted last night, we'll hear Forrester in the great culmating movement of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell"), in performances conducted by George Szell, Fritz Reiner, and Bruno Walter. And we'll sample some of the rest of this unique Mahlerian's repertory.


SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS

The current list is here.

#