SOUTH AFRICAN-AMERICAN SOPRANO
“At once powerful, radiant, timbrally beautiful, and balanced throughout the range, her soprano is that of a singer at the top of her game”
OPERA Magazine
Durban-born South African Fulbrighter, BRONWEN FORBAY’S operatic successes include critically acclaimed performances of Mozart’s Queen of the Night (The Magic Flute) with the Wolf Trap Opera Company, Eugene Opera, and Tulsa Opera. Other celebrated roles include Orasia, Queen of Thrace (U. S. premier of Telemann’s Orpheus), Adina (L’Elisir d’amore), Velmyra (Wading Home) by Mary Alice Rich, Violetta (La Traviata), and the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor with the Cape Town Opera. Concert appearances as a soloist include standard and modern works including Bach’s B Minor Mass (Santa Fe), Handel’s Creation (Cincinnati), Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor (Cincinnati), Mozart Requiem (on tour in Northern Italy: Venice, Verona, Vicenza), Mendelssohn’s Elijah (Dallas), Beethoven’s 9th Symphony (Plano, TX) and Missa Solemnis (Tulsa), Miller’s ReWind Cantata for Voice, Tape, and Testimony (Royal Festival Hall, London, England), Mnomiya’s Ingqai sivele we-Africa (Durban), and the premier of semi-autobiographical song-cycle Ubuntu: We are one family by Mary Alice Rich for the Voces Intimae Recital Series (Dallas, TX), Forbay gave “triumphant”* performances as a featured soloist with the Johannesburg and KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestras (South Africa), and also performed with the Greenville Symphony Orchestra (South Carolina) during their 2023-2024 seasons. Upcoming performances include a recital with world-renowned organist, Dr. Charles Tompkins, on the Hartness Organ Series, and Contessa Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro with the Greenville Symphony Orchestra.
* Bongani Tembe, Executive Director, Johannesburg Philharmonic and KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestras
Reviewer Scott Cantrell praised Forbay's performanceof Velmyra in the Dallas World Premier of Wading home by composer Mary Alice Rich, calling Forbay " a drama-queen Velmyra, (with) a soprano that bloomed and blazed thrillingly on high”.
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
When Forbay reprised the role of tragic heroine Violetta Valery with the Gauteng Opera (Johannesburg, South Africa). Her performance was hailed a "triumph!" Paul Boekkooi noted:
"It requires a courageous soprano to portray a completely well-rounded Violetta. The demands made in Act I are totally different from those in Acts II and III.
Bronwen Forbay's musical presentation encompassed all these requirements – from high coloratura to heavily dramatic moments. Her interpretation was magnificent, full of expressive power, with a varied timbre spectrum. Worth more than gold, is a person who can make you believe in the character - even in her extremely elegant collapse and death at the end.”*NEWS24 Online
*Originally in Afrikaans.
Forbay maintains an extensive concert repertoire of standard and modern works including Bach’s B Minor Mass, BWV Cantatas 51, 202 (Wedding) and 209, Haydn’s The Creation and Lord Nelson Mass, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Missa Solemnis, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Mozart's Mass in c minor and Requiem - performed on tour in Venice, Verona and Vicenza (Italy) with Varna International. Forbay performed the Soprano Soloist in South African composer Phelelani Mnomiya’s Inqaisivele weAfrika (Zulu) arranged for four soloists, chorus, and orchestra, during the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup. She was also the Soprano Soloist along with highly-celebrated South Africans Sibongile Khumalo (mezzo-soprano), and Fikile Mvingelwa (baritone), in modern South African composer Philip Miller’s REwind Cantata for Voice Tape and Testimony (based on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings) at the Royal Festival Hall in London, England. Additional appearances as a featured Soloist include performances with the Alabama, Indianapolis, Brazos Valley, Waco, and Tulsa Symphony Orchestras, the Santa Fe Pro Musica (Baroque) Orchestra, Cincinnati Baroque, CCM Philharmonia, Greenville Symphony Orchestra, Manhattan School of Music Percussion Orchestra, Johannesburg Festival Orchestra, Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, and KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra.
An avid recitalist, Forbay has performed throughout South Africa, the US, and Europe at various notable venues including the American Cathedral in Paris (France) Les Arts Georges V recital series, and with Dr. Stephen Pierce (piano) at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles).
Forbay has presented at the Dallas-Fort Worth NATS, TEXOMA NATS, South Africa Chapter NATS, National NATS, College Music Society (CMS) National Conferences, and the International Congress of Voice Teachers (ICVT). Successful in several international competitions, Forbay won 2nd prize and the Audience Choice Award in Opera Birmingham's 2002 Voice Competition (US). She won the Southern Methodist University’s Concerto Competition (Voice Category) in 2004, and the 1st UNISA Southern African Voice Competion in 2005. In 2006, she won 3rd prize in both the CCM Corbett Competition and in the 5th UNISA International Voice Competition. Previous winners of the UNISA International Voice Competition include sopranos Marilyn Mims and Renée Fleming. Forbay also won the SAMRO (South African Music Rights Organization) Award for Most Promising South African Opera Singer that year. In 2007, Forbay was awarded both the Catherine Filene Shouse Career Grant for Singers from the Wolf Trap Opera Company and the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music (a prestigious national South African award whose recipients include internationally acclaimed soprano Pretty Yende). This achievement led to Forbay being the featured soloist in a Gala Concert with the Johannesburg Festival Orchestra on the Grahamstown National Arts Festival's main-stage program. As part of the festival, she also performed the Soprano Soloist in Haydn's The Creation with world-renowned bass-baritone, Simon Estes, highly-regarded American tenor and Furman University Music Department Chair, Randall Umstead, and the Yale Alumni Chorus.
A highly sought-after adjudicator and masterclass clinician, Forbay’s South African voice students won the 1st and 2nd prizes in the 2010 UKZN Classical Performers Competition and have been semi-finalists in the ATKV Musiq voice competition. In the US, her Classical voice students won 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prizes in 2019, 2020 and 2021 in the TMTA (Texas Music Teachers Association) Young Artist Voice Contests, 1st prize in the 2018 Texoma NATS Hall Johnson Voice Competition, as well as the 1st and 2nd prizes respectively in the 2021 DFW NATS Student Auditions Adult category and Musical Theater 5A category. In recent years, her students have been winners in South Carolina and Mid-Atlantic NATS, and many have advanced to nationals. Forbay’s Musical Theater students have performed on Broadway, off-Broadway, and Broadway National Tours.
Dr. Forbay is an Associate Professor of Voice at Furman University in Greenville, SC. She was formerly an Associate Professor of Music (Voice) at the McLennan Community College in Waco, TX, where she taught Lyric Diction (Italian, German, French and English) and Applied Voice. Forbay has served on faculties at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, Sam Houston State University, and the University of KwaZulu-Natal, her alma mater. She holds a B. Mus. from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Durban, South Africa), an M. Mus. from the Manhattan School of Music, an Artist Certificate from the Southern Methodist University, and a DMA in Voice Performance with a cognate in opera stage directing from the University of Cincinnati, CCM. She is the first South African woman to earn a DMA in Voice Performance.
Dr. Forbay has served as the TMTA Voice Contest Chair, is the Treasurer and founding member of the South Africa Chapter of NATS, and President of Furman’s Black Faculty and Staff Association. She was a board member and Treasurer for arts agency Creative Waco (Waco, TX), and currently serves on the board of the Bruce Foote Memorial Scholarship Foundation affiliated with the Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX).
Two articles on Afrikaans Art Song Literature co-authored with Dr. Christian Bester were published in the Journal of Singing, Volume 8, March/April 2022. “Afrikaans Art Song Literature: Translation and Performance Guide” also co-authored with Dr. Christian Bester will be published by Oxford University Press in 2025.