Marta Eggerth

Marta Eggerth was born on April 17, 1912, in Budapest, Hungary, the daughter of Tilly Eggerth, a dramatic coloratura soprano, and Paul Eggerth, a bank director. She died on December 26, 2013, in Rye, New York, at the age of 101. A singer and actress associated with what has been called the Silver Age of Operetta, Eggerth attracted the attention of some of the most prominent operetta composers of the 20th century, among them Franz Lehár, Fritz Kreisler, Robert Stolz, Oscar Straus, and Paul Abraham, each of whom composed works specifically for her.

Eggerth began singing in early childhood and was considered a Wunderkind by the age of 11, when she made her theatrical debut in the operetta Mannequins. During those early years she developed a coloratura repertoire that included works by Rossini, Meyerbeer, Offenbach, and Johann Strauss II. Still a teenager, she toured Denmark, Holland, and Sweden before traveling to Vienna at the invitation of composer Emmerich Kálmán, who engaged her to understudy Adele Kern, a celebrated coloratura of the Vienna State Opera, in his operetta Das Veilchen vom Montmartre. When Kern suddenly became unavailable, Eggerth assumed the title role to strong critical reception. At 17, she went on to perform the role of Adele in Max Reinhardt's 1929 Hamburg production of Die Fledermaus.

In the early 1930s, Eggerth moved into film, ultimately appearing in more than 40 productions in five languages: Hungarian, English, German, French, and Italian. Her film credits included Where is this Lady (1932), Ein Lied, ein Kuss, ein Mädel (Berlin, 1932, music by Robert Stolz), The Csardas Princess (1934), The Blonde Carmen (Berlin, 1935), Casta Diva (Rome, 1935), Das Hofkonzert (1936), and Zauber der Bohème (Vienna, 1936, music by Robert Stolz). Lehár wrote two films expressly for her: Es war einmal ein Walzer (1932) and Die ganze Welt dreht sich um Liebe (Vienna, 1935). It was on the set of the 1934 film Mein Herz ruft immer nach dir that she met Polish tenor Jan Kiepura; the two married in 1936 and became known across Europe as the Liebespaar, or Love Pair. After signing a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the early 1940s, Eggerth appeared in two Hollywood films alongside Judy Garland: For Me and My Gal (1942), which also marked Gene Kelly's first major film role, and Presenting Lily Mars (1943).

Eggerth's Broadway career spanned 1940 to 1945. She first appeared on Broadway in Richard Rodgers' musical Higher and Higher, for which she had been signed by the Shubert Theatre. In 1943, she and Kiepura starred together at the Majestic Theater in a revised production of Lehár's The Merry Widow, with Robert Stolz conducting and choreography by George Balanchine. The couple would go on to perform The Merry Widow more than 2,000 times across five languages throughout Europe and America, including a run in London's Palace Theatre in 1954 and a production in Berlin in 1965. In 1945, Eggerth and Kiepura returned to Broadway together in the musical Polonaise. She also appeared on Broadway in The Merry Widow Burlesque.

Beyond Broadway, Eggerth and Kiepura performed La bohème together on the operatic stage in Chicago to strong reviews, and gave two sold-out concerts in a single week at London's Royal Albert Hall in 1956. After World War II, the couple returned to Europe, making films including Valse Brillante (1949) and The Land of Smiles (1952). Throughout her career Eggerth maintained recital tours across Europe, Canada, and the United States, drawing on a repertoire that encompassed lieder, opera, film songs, and Viennese operetta.

Kiepura died in 1966, and Eggerth ceased performing for several years. Persuaded by her mother to resume her career, she began making regular television appearances in the 1970s and returned to active concert work in Europe. In 1982 she came back to the American stage, co-starring in the Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt musical Colette opposite Diana Rigg in Seattle and Denver, and later appearing in Stephen Sondheim's Follies in Pittsburgh. In 1999, at the age of 87, she performed at the Vienna State Opera in a televised matinée concert hosted by opera impresario and historian Marcel Prawy, marking that house's first production of Lehár's The Merry Widow; she sang a medley from the operetta in four languages and received a standing ovation. The following year she repeated the medley at a gala marking the 200th anniversary of Vienna's Theater an der Wien.

In 2001, Eggerth returned to London for a sold-out interview-in-concert at Wigmore Hall, accompanied by conductor-pianist Alexander Frey and hosted by British author and critic Brendan Carroll. She also performed at the annual Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation concerts at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall and appeared in the Austrian television detective series Tatort, playing an aging diva suspected in a murder case. Her activities in 2006 and 2007 included concerts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, performances at the Café Sabarsky in the Neue Galerie, a concert at New York University's Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes, an appearance at the Austrian Cultural Forum, operetta master classes at the Manhattan School of Music, and an appearance at the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged. Her last performance took place in 2011, when she was 99 years old. In 2003, Patria Music released a retrospective double CD of her recordings titled My Life My Song.

Eggerth received major artistic decorations from Austria, Germany, Poland, and Italy in recognition of her work in operetta, theatre, and film. Among her final honors were the Knights Cross of the Order of the Merit of the Republic of Poland, the Knights Cross of the Order of the Merit of the Republic of Hungary, and the Erwin Piscator Life Achievement Award.