Ahead of kicking off a new performance series at the Royal Opera House later this month, Keeley Forsyth talks Alan Pedder through the music that's made her.
In the 25 years since Björk’s historic Vespertine show at London’s Royal Opera House, the Covent Garden institution has become gradually more open to contemporary artists performing their own work on its stages.
Elton John, Pet Shop Boys, and Rufus Wainwright have all graced the spectacular main theatre, white and gold with crimson seats and a deep blue oculus that mimics the night sky. Below ground meanwhile, in the ROH’s Linbury Theatre, things have been allowed to get a bit more edgy and odd, like a laboratory of sorts. John Grant, Caroline Polacheck, Matthew Herbert, and the late Scott Walker have been involved in various commissions at the Linbury, plus, more recently, ESKA made a splash with her binaural opera Woman & Machine.
This autumn, associate director Netia Jones is bringing a whole new series of research and development events to the Linbury, called Dark Nights, with the idea of creating one-off performances by vocal artists and composers at the vanguard of experimentation – kicking off on September 23 with Keeley Forsyth who has, over the course of three albums and a handful of EPs, carved out an impressive niche as one of the UK’s most distinctive voices, spine-tinglingly deep and with a very physical vibrato.
In Hand To Mouth To, her new work for Dark Nights, the Harrogate-based actor and musician is expanding on her Matthew Bourne collaboration Hand to Mouth from last year, transforming it into a multi-layered theatre piece through projections and a new spoken-word element based on new work by The Son of Man author Jean-Baptiste Del Amo.
“We’ve done something very bespoke,” she says. “When I’m on stage I often mutter things to myself so I thought, what if I actually said words that were written by an incredible writer. Jean-Baptiste had written that he’d been listening to my first album Debris while he was writing The Son of Man, so we got in touch to see if he would be interested. So he has written seven chapters for this new show, and it’s a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.”
Called The No-End House, the story describes a brother and sister reaching back through memories of their childhood and the home they grew up in, as told from the sister’s point of view, through Forsyth’s narration. “You get a feeling that their father has just died, and that their mother died a long time ago, and it reaches back into all these memories of abuse and connection,” she says. “It's very stark. We premiered a version of the piece at BRDCST festival earlier this year that played a lot with lighting, but this is something very bespoke.”
As an unusual singer herself, Forsyth says she’s naturally drawn to other voices with “a kind of cavity and resonance.” “I like it when I feel that the voice isn't just coming from the vocal cords,” she says. “I think it was Eartha Kitt who said that she was ‘of the dirt,’ and that's the kind of voice I like.”
“That’s probably why I was drawn to opera singing as a teenager,” she adds. “Although I never got to see an opera as a kid, I really, really loved the vibrato. I would hum to myself all the time, and it gave me a very comforting feeling in my body.”
Looking at her choices for the songs that have defined her life, Forsyth’s interest in a wide range of voices is clear, from soprano Dawn Upshaw to Scott Walker, via Karen Carpenter, Karen Dalton, and Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser. “Although I’m most drawn to female voices, I never actually see them in a female form, because a voice can be anything and I think about that a lot,” she says. “I think I do push what a female voice can do rather than keep it in a kind of sensitive and breathy place. I like singers who are very strong.”
“The Rite of Spring” by Igor Stravinsky
KEELEY FORSYTH: I first came to know The Rite of Spring through the choreographer Pina Bausch, whose production transformed the piece into something very visceral and unsettling. Her version was performed by the Tanztheater Wuppertal, in 1975 I think, on a stage that was covered with earth. It had this really stark depiction of “the chosen one” being sacrificed to gratify the misogyny of the men surrounding them.
Seeing that was another moment in which I felt the possibility of performance, where the music and the body could become one thing, whether through a singular performer or a collective of dancers. It made me think about music not simply as something that we hear but something that we can inhabit in this physical world.
I get a lot of music inspiration from theatre and dance companies like the Tanztheater Wuppertal, Peeping Tom, and Complicité, and from an American choreographer called Bobbi Jene Smith. So, there’s a strong Pina Bausch connection here again.
BEST FIT: So, when you listen to The Rite of Spring, do you immediately think of the performance, or can you enjoy it just as a piece of music?
I always think of the performance. They're not separate to me. There’s a very repetitive movement she does with her dancers, almost like they are hitting themselves, and I think about that a lot. I can’t really hear the music on its own.
The music was famously quite shocking back in the day. Less so now, but it still sounds so very physical.
Yes, there’s a rebellion and truthfulness to the music, which is something I think one should always try to reach for, especially in very constrained systems. The Rite of Spring was first performed within the ballet world and people hated it. There were even small riots about it.
Do you know of anyone whose had a strong reaction to your music? Have you caused a riot, or made someone cry?
[laughs] Actually, I did a performance last night here in Porto and people said there was a woman in the audience who was crying. I’m not sure if people are just being kind. Because I’m northern, my instinct is always to not believe a good thing. I’m like, oh that must mean she hated it, did she leave?
I do suffer from a fear of outstaying my welcome. Even when I’m on stage I find it difficult to feel deserving of people’s attention. Maybe that’s why I take on a character, because I’m always thinking that people have somewhere better to be.
“Farmer in the City" by Scott Walker
KEELEY FORSYTH: Scott Walker is a stop-whatever-you're-doing kind of artist. You can't really have Scott Walker playing in the background, he demands your attention completely. Like you become almost cemented to the floor and just have to surrender, drop everything else and listen.
“Farmer in the City” is one of those pieces that still feels like a shock to the system. Every time I hear it, I'm struck all over again by how extraordinarily beautiful it is. There is something so singular and uncompromising about his work, it feels less like listening to a song and more like entering a different state of consciousness.
At the time I heard Scott Walker for the first time, I was very nervous about my voice being quite low and having such a strong vibrato. I didn't know if there was ever an audience for it. Or rather I did know it, but I hadn't really heard anything that I could say my voice was kind of similar to, until Scott. Listening to him did give me permission and the confidence to sing in the way I wanted to sing, and to not try and make it more listenable for people.
Me being a singer and making music was never really about trying to belong anywhere. Obviously, I've had a long life as an actor, which is a life full of not getting various parts, full of trying to work out what it is about you that didn't land, and it becomes very, very tiring. And then what is born out of that is this kind of quiet beast of music. So this is where I am now, with the help of people like him.
BEST FIT: The song is about the film director Pier Paolo Pasolini. Do you think about him when you listen to this song?
No, I don't actually! But I do think that Pasolini is a crossover of all the things that I love, like the Gorécki symphony that’s further down the list. I think I just really like blocks of sound. Even in the classical pieces that I’ve chose, there’s a heavy block of sound that feels completely erratic and manic. Because when you have the mania, you can have something very beautiful in there too.
“O mio babbino caro” by Giacomo Puccini
KEELEY FORSYTH: From the age of 12 until I was about 18, I had singing lessons with a gorgeous old lady called Olive Valentine, a retired opera singer who was in her 80s, and every week I would travel to her house in Heywood, Greater Manchester, which was about 20 minutes away. She would accompany me on the piano, playing with one crooked finger, and I would sing and do my scales.
She had a collection of tape recordings, only a few backing tracks, and this was one of the pieces that she would have me sing. Obviously, I didn't know anything about opera when I was 12 years old, but I remember feeling incredibly emotional when I sang this song, imagining the story behind it. But the reason why I chose this piece is not just because it’s a beautiful piece of music. It’s because those lessons were about something bigger for me.
I always say I was fortunate to be brought up on a council estate in a lower working-class family. These singing lessons were costing, I think, £12 at the time, so I was acutely aware that I mustn’t waste a penny of it. So going to Olive Valentine’s house became a commitment. It also gave me a sense that there were other worlds that I could enter, worlds of music, art, culture – I remember it being the first time I'd ever seen books in a house – and I think I have continued to follow that desire to live a rich, cultured life rather than a path that seemed predetermined. Olive gave me two things that really shaped my life.
BEST FIT: That’s a beautiful story. It's kind of funny that this beautiful Puccini aria [from the opera Gianni Schicchi] is basically a song about emotional blackmail though.
Yes, I know. I felt really angry about it though, at the time, as someone who wanted to do something with their life and felt that they couldn’t. In the girl’s case, if she couldn’t marry the man she wanted to marry, she would throw herself off a bridge and take her own life. It was one of those things where I felt like I wanted to get into the story and help. I remember feeling angry because of the empathy I felt, and the thought that I could get in there and talk to her father and help this poor girl.
So, what I’m hearing is that you could have had a different career as a counsellor? I think you picked the right one. Who was the first opera singer that you were interested in?
I didn't really know much about opera and was just starting from the top, it was probably Maria Callas. It’s funny when I talk about opera because I’m aware it maybe gives the idea that I’ve lived a very privileged life, because opera doesn’t seem to trickle down into the lower working class, but you just need one person to introduce you to something to learn to love it too.
It never trickled down to me. It’s weird though, the few times I have watched opera I’ve enjoyed it, but I can’t listen to it without the visual. It’s too much.
Oh, it’s interesting that you say that. I know exactly what you mean.
“Yesterday Once More” by The Carpenters
KEELEY FORSYTH: I was a huge fan of The Carpenters when I was a child. I couldn’t have told you any songs or bands that were popular at the time, but I could sing every word to The Carpenters, and Kathy Kirby, Judy Garland, and Stephen Sondheim too. I nearly went on Stars in Their Eyes to do Karen Carpenter, that’s how much I studied her voice. I would mimic everything. Every gesture, every breath, every thought that I imagined she was thinking while singing, and maybe that’s why I became an actor.
Karen was one of the first singers that I wanted to know more about as a person. I remember finding it really hard to understand how someone I admired and loved so much couldn't love herself in the same way, and I still think of Karen often. She was the first person that I connected a life with outside of the music, and I’ve watched a lot of documentaries about her.
Maybe in the same way as with the Puccini song, I think I wanted to get inside her life somehow and be there for her, to naively offer something that maybe I have helped. I don’t know what, but you know how it is when you’re a kid, you really feel like you can change things.
Some years ago I was doing some work at Yale University, which is in New Haven, where she was born, and it was nice to be in her town for a bit.
BEST FIT: Is there some kind of museum to her in the town?
There are a lot of murals, but I don’t think there’s a museum. There’s just the house that she was born and brought up in, and it’s just a regular house. I don't remember there being any plaque or anything, but she's very present there.
What is it about “Yesterday Once More” exactly? Is it the Carpenters song for you?
Well, I could have picked any song of hers, really. I know The Carpenters sang a lot of stuff that they didn’t write, but I think her brother Richard did co-write this one, so that’s one reason I chose it. I often feel very stupid in a pub quiz or something because I never know who writes the songs. And especially because I’m around musicians more now, I tend to keep my mouth shut because I’ll probably embarrass myself by not knowing that “Ticket to Ride” was a Beatles song, for example. I mean, I thought Erasure’s versions of all those ABBA songs were their own songs, so…
The funny thing with The Carpenters is that I would sing their songs more than I actually listened to them, and the ones I enjoyed most were the ones that would get me emotional or on the verge of tears. A lot of their songs do that, but there’s something about “Yesterday Once More”. It has that great opening line, “When I was young, I'd listen to the radio,” and it’s kind of easy to sing, so it was perfect for studying and learning how to take my time with the phrasing and to learn how to breathe.
“I Believe in You” by Talk Talk
KEELEY FORSYTH: I really love Mark Hollis, not just his music but the way he chose to live his life. He had such integrity in the way he approached both life and his music. There’s something so moving in the way that he was willing to sing about the suffering and the drug addiction of his brother, in this song, without exploiting it or turning it into spectacle.
I'm also touched by the fact that he devoted himself to his family. His life seems to hold a quiet reminder that artistic depth and sensitivity don't have to come at the expense of love or family, or a private life. I'm really drawn to people who have the courage to embrace all of that, because often we're shoved into this corner where artists have to be singular and suffering, and it’s nonsense. Mark is another one I wish I could have stood in the same vicinity of.
I made a cover of “I Believe in You” very recently, privately, purely for my own listening. It’s a song that completely undoes me. I just find it impossible to hear without being really affected by it, as I imagine most people are.
BEST FIT: Last time we spoke, you said you were becoming more and more interested in using electronics, and maybe you wanted to go further down that path in the future. Is that still something you're pursuing? Is your Talk Talk cover electronic?
Is it electronic? Hmm. I think it's just very simple, actually. I think the most enjoyable part of making music is when you're just making it for yourself, not for anything in particular. I do try and wipe the slate clean when I go into the studio, so that I'm just making music for me. I have been experimenting with electronic stuff. But with the cover, I think it takes the softer elements of the song. You know me… I don’t ramp anything up, ever.
“Move On” by Stephen Sondheim
BEST FIT: I know you're a documented Sondheim fan. You love West Side Story and so on. Tell me more about this song from Sunday in the Park with George and why you love it?
KEELEY FORSYTH: Well, I have been a huge admirer of Bernadette Peters, who did the original Broadway cast recording, for a long time. I saw her live in London when she did the Stephen Sondheim Old Friends show – me and my partner were like two goths in the middle – and I just felt really moved by seeing her.
I'd always wanted to see her in person. Her voice and interpretations of songs have been a huge part of my world for so, so long. I've not lost my dream of one day being in a Broadway musical, and I do try and create the pieces that I make with that in mind, things like giving the character a story and a place to go.
There's something about this song. The characters are not together in it, but she’s telling the guy, who’s an artist, “If it's not been done by you, it hasn't been done before,” and she's just really encouraging. And at the time I first heard it, I think I was in a relationship that had a sort of similar connotation of seeing someone's talent and loving them into a better place for them. So, I always get emotional when this song comes on.
Where's the most awkward place you've heard it? Have you been left crying in the supermarket?
Well, there are some amazing buskers around where I live, particularly these two guys who, from the outside, look like they’ve just put their tools down and walked off a building site. One day I was walking around and I saw them singing a song from Les Mis – the Jean Valjean and Javert duet, “The Confrontation” – out through some kind of crappy old stereo monitor thing, and my eyes just filled immediately. I got a huge lump in my throat. It was devastating. Yeah, so that was me in the middle of Harrogate town centre, crying at these two guys.
Do you remember the first musical you saw?
I think it was Annie. I think my grandma said that it was Annie that I saw, and I do still sort of remember that. I mean, I was very, very young, but I do remember being taken into this place with the curtains and the seats, and the stillness.
It was one of those things you read about when someone goes somewhere or does something and immediately knows it’s for them. It was feeling like this is home and this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. And I had just enough talent to keep that dream alive. Not enough for me to kind of get on the Broadway stages, but yeah, I think finding your own path is also extremely valid and justified.
And how's your Broadway dancing skills?
Well, I trained as a dancer, so I guess I'm a triple threat, or whatever they call it.
Okay, so EGOT coming your way then.
[laughs] I’m no threat at all.
“Sea, Swallow Me” by Cocteau Twins & Harold Budd
BEST FIT: You’ve said before that The Moon & Melodies is one of your all-time favourite albums, and that it reminded you of falling in love. What’s the story with “Sea, Swallow Me” in particular?
KEELEY FORSYTH: I came to this song through Harold Budd, actually, because I listen to a lot of his stuff. I hate talking about personal things but, to make a very sweeping statement, I met my partner around the same time that I became aware of this song, so it has become “our song,” I suppose.
I love the dreamy, kind of weightless quality of the music, and that it creates an emotional space rather than telling you explicitly what to feel. There’s something very intimate and elusive about it. Like a lot of other people with Cocteau Twins, I’ve tried to find out what the lyrics are but there are none written down, which suits me fine. It’s just a very beautiful song that I’ve now brought into my personal life.
From the evocative title, what do you think the song is about? What does it do to you?
I mean, the moment the song plays, from the first note it’s like you’re just pulled into it. There’s no building up to it. The sensation and the emotion that I get is very similar to the Arthur Russell album World of Echo, which is another favourite of mine. It’s something that feels like love and grief, but it’s so hopeful with its emotion. I don’t know what it’s about, but it very definitely has a push and pull to it. You definitely feel that you’re untethered.
And did this song give you a runway into the rest of the Cocteau Twins world? Have you explored much of their other music?
I have, a little bit, but I'm a bit of a bugger with things because I don't have that much music knowledge. And I know I don’t, because I'm surrounded by the people I work with, like Matthew Bourne and Ross Downes, who know everything about the records they have. I do love Cocteau Twins, like everybody does, I guess, but I came to them much, much later than most.
“Symphony No. 3” by Henryk Górecki
BEST FIT: Let’s talk about “Symphony No. 3” then, which was a late bloomer too. Because it wasn’t that well known when it was first performed in the ‘70s, but only became famous later, in 1992.
KEELEY FORSYTH: Oh really? I didn’t know that. Now it’s regarded as the masterpiece it is, obviously.
I’ve listened to a lot of Górecki, though I sometimes get him mixed up with Krzysztof Penderecki, who composed the soundtrack of The Shining. But, anyway, I heard his music in some film and then could sort of delve in and research from there.
I chose “Symphony No. 3” because it was part of my evolution as an artist in that it was one of the first times that I experimented with music and image. My then partner and I decided to make a little Super 8 film to this piece of music, so we got on a train to Brighton and he filmed me walking into the sea.
I was wearing what had become my uniform – I always have a uniform – but at that time it was a black hat, floor-length black coat, and 1920s boots. And I remember I never, ever took the hat off, not even to sleep. Which, looking back, was probably a sign that I was slowly and surely heading towards some kind of nervous breakdown, which I did have. So maybe that was the sign, never taking the hat off, ever.
Anyway, something important was happening creatively here. I think I was beginning to understand how music could create a visual, emotional world, and how I could place myself inside it. The film itself was probably quite naïve, but the impulse behind it has stayed with me. So when I hear this track, I remember a younger version of myself trying to work out who I am as an artist, if I would even dare call myself that at the time.
Is there a particular recording of this that you go to above all others?
It’s the most famous one with Dawn Upshaw, the soprano. She has such a recognisable voice. Oh, and I heard a live performance of “Symphony No. 3” recently, by an amazing soprano called Francesca Chiejina.
I think the Beth Gibbons version is outstanding. Have you listened?
I’ve never heard it! But my manager Laura talks about that a lot and says it was really incredible. I mean, what an incredible thing to take on. I couldn’t do it.
What’s your understanding of the historical background of the song?
I only just found out recently after watching a Górecki documentary. I think it has to do with the liberation of the Jewish people, so its origins are as a piece of music made in response to events. I think he even visited the concentration camps as part of his research.
Have you written music in that way, by researching real events?
Yes, actually the title track from The Hollow is a song that came from something I read in the paper about a woman with postpartum psychosis. Without reading that small article I probably wouldn’t have made that song, so it was very much a direct response. And I do understand something of the topic myself, but to write from my own experience sometimes feels almost impossible. The way I live my life, you know, there's no interest in that.
“Something on Your Mind” by Karen Dalton
KEELEY FORSYTH: I’ve been quite wary of being drawn to the work of artists who suffer from either addiction or depression. Not to bang on about it, but I do think that comes from how I grew up. If you have seen real deprivation as a child, your survival instinct is to try and get away from it because the fear that it could take you too is huge. So, because the way I listen to music is so involved, it’s not a detached thing, I’ve been very careful about listening to artists who are in suffering. Maybe that's also my own personal thing, not just from an empathy point of view.
I think I've also viewed music-making as work. There’s an element of discipline, and you can't turn up to work not clear-minded. But I think it goes further than that. The catalyst of me wanting to become something was because I saw, if you didn't have a dream or passion, where you could end up, and it was not nice. So I think there's something in me that still tries to protect myself around artists like that.
BEST FIT: It makes sense, but it’s curious that you can say that about Karen Dalton but you didn’t feel the same way about Karen Carpenter.
Weirdly, no. But I do think Karen Carpenter was very good at putting on a mask, you know?
What is it about “Something on Your Mind” that stands out for you?
I tried to pick songs that the artist wrote themselves, but I’m not sure that she did write this one. I think she only rarely wrote her own stuff, which, I mean, you really don’t have to, not when you’re Karen Dalton for sure.
[googles hurriedly] Oh, it's a song by Dino Valenti, aka Chet Powers.
Oh well, it was obviously made for her. “So you turned your days into night-time”? That’s very Karen Dalton, isn't it? She was the night to everyone's day, or that's how I feel when I listen to her.
I think I probably heard this song quite accidentally on Tidal one day, but I know her work has been celebrated for a long time now. There’s something very singular about her. I know part of it is knowing the way that she died, quite alone in a caravan from an AIDS-related illness, I think, but I can just get completely undone for her when I hear her voice. I hate to use people as a kind of spectacle and be like “Oh their voice is so incredible, and their suffering is in every chord.” But Karen Dalton just had an absolute talent and no filter.
It's taken a long time for me to access the things that I am capable of, but there are some people that just come out like that, like Karen Dalton and Eartha Kitt, although they led very different lives. They both were of the dirt, and yeah, I just wish that Karen had been able to get a bit more support. So there's a sadness that I get when listening to her stuff.
It's interesting that you came to her quite late because, from what I’ve read, people were comparing you to Karen Dalton when you first started out. Did you know that?
I didn't know that! I definitely have a Karen Dalton door within me, but I don’t really record that side of myself. Maybe it comes out more in performance.
I came to everything really, really late. I was just an actress trying to get work. I didn't do anything interesting with my life until I started making music myself. So yeah, I'm on catch up.
Keeley Forsyth opens the Royal Opera House's new Dark Nights season on 23 September 2026
Sign up to Best Fit's Substack for regular dispatches from the world of pop culture