Amanda Forsythe, from Boston to the Grammy Awards

Born in New York but closely connected to the Boston scene, Amanda Forsythe has established herself as one of the great voices of the Baroque repertoire. A loyal presence with Boston Baroque and the Boston Early Music Festival, and a guest artist at both the Rossini Opera Festival and the Royal Opera House, she now sees her recording Ino (Classic Produktion Osnabrück) win the 2026 Grammy Award for “Best Classical Solo Vocal Album.” In this interview, she reflects on her beginnings, her artistic loyalties, motherhood, the pandemic, and her unwavering attachment to two centuries of Baroque repertoire.

It all began in Boston

“A lot of success in this career is being in the right place at the right time. And I certainly was.” That’s Amanda Forsythe speaking, approaching her quarter-century mark as a highly successful professional in a notably tough profession. She’s being modest, of course: it’s more than mere coincidence that’s made her so luminous a practitioner of the vocal baroque. Uncommon basic talent—a soprano voice that’s been described as “springwater pure” and “shimmering and sinuous”— and a heavy dose of hard technical work have certainly played their parts.

I’ve been an admirer of hers for almost as long as she’s been a pro, but I’m “meeting” her for the very first time, via a late-October Zoom session. I’m almost startled by the image I’m seeing: where are the heaping powdered wig, the crown, the vast hoop skirt of Telemann’s Ino, tempest-tossed queen of Boeotia, in whose guise I last saw her perform, at Caramoor this past June? Instead, on home camera (unadorned, chestnut hair falling in gentle waves past her shoulders, casually sipping a beverage through a straw), she’s more reminiscent of a fresh-faced teen ingenue at a vintage-Hollywood soda fountain.

Forsythe’s right place and time were turn-of-this-century Boston, a city she’s so closely identified with that I mistakenly assumed she was born there. But no: she’s a New Yorker by birth, and lived in Manhattan, on Roosevelt Island in the East River, and then on Long Island till she went off to Poughkeepsie, and Vassar, for college. After that came Boston. “The New England Conservatory was one of the few schools I got into for my master’s; my sister was living in Boston, and she was pregnant, so I wound up here. There are so many period groups here, and I started to get hired. But I really didn’t study the baroque rep in particular. I got a general performance degree. I didn’t get admitted to the opera program at NEC, which led me to audition elsewhere.”

Passionate about early music and want to read this subscriber-only article?

If you are not a subscriber, join the international Total Baroque community. Subscribe here from 5.00€.

I subscribe

If you are already a subscriber, sign in.

I sign in