Catherine Foster born to be a singer
Nov 19 2009 By Christopher Morley
Birmingham Conservatoire helped a midwife to become an opera star, writes Christopher Morley.
From a nursing career as a midwife to singing Brunnhilde in Wagner’s epic Ring cycle with one of Germany’s top opera companies is a step which probably only one person in the world has made, and that person is Catherine Foster.
Born in the East Midlands, Catherine played a variety of musical instruments during her schooldays, and sang in the local village church, becoming lead chorister at the age of 15.
“I’ve always had a passion for singing,” she tells me from her home in Weimar in Germany.
“As soon as I could talk I was singing, according to my mother! When I was around five years of age she couldn’t find me one Sunday morning, and after searching I was found standing in the aisle of the church singing Away in a Manger. It was the middle of July. . .”
But for all her delight in music, Catherine left college at the age of 18 with the required A & O-level examination passes that allowed her to commence training as a nurse.
“I progressed through my nursing career and became a midwife, she says. “But it was at this stage in my life that I started having singing tuition. Through my teachers I joined their amateur choir, singing at local venues, and so was born my love of opera.”
Some developing vocal problems led Catherine to change her singing teacher. She had the good fortune to be taken on by Pamela Cook, founder of Cantamus, the Mansfield-based girls’ choir which has achieved resounding success in competitions worldwide, and an extraordinary vocal technician in her own right.
“Pam is still my mentor and teacher today. I owe my whole career and where I am today to her teaching skills. In only a short period of time Pam could tell just how much I wanted to sing professionally, and in early 1995 she suggested the best way of doing this would be to follow the college route. She recommended me for an audition at Birmingham Conservatoire, and I was given a place on their undergraduate course.
“I thoroughly enjoyed my two years at the Conservatoire as I gained my BMus degree. It was a very friendly, safe, environment bridging the way between my two careers and giving me the opportunity to change my way of thinking. While I was at the Conservatoire I won the Dame Eva Turner Award, which enabled me to take a post-grad course at the Royal Northern College of Music, where I studied for one year.”
Catherine describes how during her first three years of study (two of those in my performance and theory classes at Birmingham Conservatoire) she worked from Monday to Friday in the colleges, and travelled back to Nottingham at weekends to work as a midwife at the City Hospital, in order to fund her way through her studies.
Another piece of good fortune intervened when she was introduced to Peter Moores in Manchester. The arts-loving philanthropist, who has a passion for opera, offered to sponsor her studies to enable her to stop working as a midwife.
