Marta Eggerth, a Rye resident and opereta star in the US and Europe, has died at age 101.
From the NY Times:
"Marta Eggerth, the ‘Callas of Operetta,’ Dies at 101
Marta Eggerth, an operetta star in Europe and the United States who was almost certainly the last living link to the grand musical confections of Franz Lehar and Emmerich Kalman, died on Dec. 26 at her home in Rye, N.Y. She was 101…
A coloratura soprano, Miss Eggerth was often called “the Maria Callas of operetta” for her vocal facility, great charm and sheer ubiquity — in opera houses, on the concert stage, in the movies and on Broadway — in the 1930s and long afterward.
For decades, she practically owned the title role in Lehar’s most famous operetta, “The Merry Widow”; she sang it thousands of times, often opposite her husband, the celebrated Polish tenor Jan Kiepura…
With her husband, whom she married in 1936, Miss Eggerth settled in the United States before the outbreak of war in Europe. Both were the children of Jewish mothers…
Miss Eggerth gave her last public performance in 2011, at 99. That engagement came nine decades after her stage debut, at which — in a fitting testament to her youth, the more innocent era and the sweetness of the musical fare with which she had begun to make her name — she asked to be paid in chocolate.""
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