Anika-France Forget

French-Canadian mezzo-soprano and composer Anika-France Forget has been noted for her exemplary stage presence, and for being playful and vocally impressive. Prior to becoming a Sidgwick Scholar with the Orpheus Choir of Toronto in 2020, she tackled—with the help of VOICEBOX: Opera in Concert’s General Director Guillermo Silva-Marin and Chorus Director Robert Cooper—the precise rhythms of Ravel, playing the roles of Concepción in L’heure espagnole, and the White Cat and the Squirrel in L’enfant et les sortilèges. 

Anika-France has participated in numerous masterclasses and private coachings, including those with Lise Davidsen, Joyce DiDonato, Sarah Connolly, Kate Royal, Julia Bullock, Iain Burnside, Richard Hetherington, Ann Murray, and Graham Johnson. In May 2022, she was selected, alongside five other singers, to participate in the week-long Internationaal Lied Festival Zeist, in the Netherlands, where she was given the opportunity to learn from the best in the industry—world-established artists like soprano Elly Ameling, bass-baritone Robert Holl, baritone Roderick Williams, and pianist and Grammy Awards nominee Hans Eijsackers.

Anika-France’s compositions have been performed throughout Canada, the United States, France, and the UK. In October 2024, Anika-France was invited as featured composer in the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra’s New Generation Composer’s Program. During this mentorship project, she worked alongside conductor Ron Royer and composer Daniel Mehdizadeh. Her composition will be released on an SPO commercial album in May 2025, using the Toronto label, Akashic Classics and distributed by Universal. Thanks to a mentoring partnership between the Diaspora Dialogues and the Orpheus Choir of Toronto, Anika-France’s choral piece “Prayer for Return” was commissioned and got its world premiere at the 2019 Raising Her Voice and 2019 Toronto’s Nuit Blanche. 

Over the years, she has received many noteworthy accolades: She was the recipient of the University of Toronto’s 2017–2021 Robert William Bygrave Entrance Scholarship and the laureate of the Prix d’excellence artistique provincial du Fonds ARTES 2017. She is a 2017 RCM Gold Medalist. She was awarded the 2021 Delius Society Prize during the London Song Festival in December of that year. She was also invited to perform as a finalist at the prestigious Susan Longfield Competition and the Somerset Song Prize in 2022. She is a proud recipient of a Leverhulme Arts Scholarship at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, U.K., where she obtained a Master of Music in Vocal Studies. Most recently, she completed an Intensive Profile Masters in Composition with a full Arts Merit Scholarship from the University of Ottawa, under the tutelage of well-acclaimed Canadian composer Kelly-Marie Murphy.

 Her love for the community has led her to organize “Salon-Concert” composer concerts in her hometown with premieres and performances delivered by the student body of the University of Ottawa. Next up, Anika-France’s music will be performed at the upcoming MusCan Conference in May 2025 at the University of Waterloo.