Amanda Forsythe

Soprano Amanda Forsythe is a versatile artist with a large repertory ranging from Baroque to contemporary music. She has appeared with a range of opera companies and instrumental ensembles around the U.S. and in Europe. Forsythe was born in New York in 1976 and grew up on the city’s Roosevelt Island, later moving to Lloyd Harbor on Long Island. Forsythe attended Vassar College, graduating in 1998 with a music degree. She went on to the New England Conservatory of Music, studying with Mary Ann Hart and Susan Clickner. Forsythe applied to the conservatory’s opera program and was rejected, but the rejection turned out to have positive ramifications; she auditioned around the Boston area and was cast in a Harvard University production of Francesco Cavalli’s Giasone. In that opera, she was heard by Boston Baroque director Martin Pearlman, who invited her to audition for that company. She went on to make many appearances with Boston Baroque and to focus on Baroque opera and vocal music generally. Forsythe won several prizes and rounded out her education with two years of study at the Tanglewood Festival in Massachusetts and an apprenticeship at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Ravinia summer venue. In 2007, she made her debut in a pair of Lully opera recordings with the Boston Early Music Orchestra and Chorus. Forsythe has maintained a high profile on the U.S. Baroque music scene, appearing with opera companies and ensembles in Boston and elsewhere, including Apollo's Fire in Cleveland, the Hudson Opera Theater in upstate New York, and Opera Boston. Her repertory includes major works from the French, Italian, and English Baroque opera repertories, but she is also well known as a singer of Rossini, in whose Il viaggio a Reims she made her European debut at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro during the 2007-2008 season. She has returned several times to that festival, once singing with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato in a program of Bellini’s duets at DiDonato’s invitation. Forsythe has also sung roles in contemporary opera, appearing in Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar and Peter Eötvös’ Angels in America. After appearing on numerous opera recordings, Forsythe made her solo debut on the Avie label in 2015 with the recital The Power of Love: Arias from Handel Operas. She went on to record for Erato, CPO, and Aparte, returning to Avie with Apollo's Fire in 2022 for the album Heavenly Bach: Arias & Cantatas of J.S. Bach. ~ James Manheim