Martina Arroyo was born on February 2,1937 and is an American operatic soprano who had a major international opera career from the 1960s through the 1980s.
38 Facts About Martina Arroyo
2.
Martina Arroyo was part of the first generation of black opera singers to achieve wide success.
3.
Martina Arroyo is best known for her performances of the Italian spinto repertoire, and in particular, her portrayals of Verdi and Puccini heroines.
4.
On December 8,2013, Martina Arroyo received a Kennedy Center Honor.
5.
Martina Arroyo was born in New York City, the younger of two children of Demetrio Martina Arroyo, originally from Puerto Rico, and Lucille Washington, a native of Charleston, South Carolina.
6.
Martina Arroyo's father was a mechanical engineer at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and earned a good salary which enabled Arroyo's mother to stay at home with their children.
7.
Martina Arroyo's job allowed the family to experience New York's cultural offerings and the family frequented museums, concerts, and the theatre.
8.
Martina Arroyo's mother was a talented amateur classical pianist and taught her daughter to play the instrument.
9.
Turnau recognized that Martina Arroyo was a major talent who just needed proper training.
10.
When Martina Arroyo did not take her training as seriously as her teacher wanted, Gurewich eventually threatened to end their lessons.
11.
Martina Arroyo decided to leave her teaching position and take work as a social worker at the East End Welfare Center.
12.
Martina Arroyo found the work fulfilling and stated of the experience, "My life had been centered on music for so long, and suddenly there I was, deeply involved in other people's problems,".
13.
In 1957 Martina Arroyo auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera but was not accepted.
14.
Martina Arroyo left NYU and entered the Kathryn Long School in the Fall of 1957 where she studied singing, drama, German, English diction, and fencing.
15.
In February 1959 Martina Arroyo sang the title role in Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride in a concert version with the Little Orchestra Society at Town Hall.
16.
Martina Arroyo made her debut there in the title role of Verdi's Aida where she was received enthusiastically.
17.
Martina Arroyo continued to sing regularly at that opera house through 1968.
18.
Martina Arroyo sang the role for her first appearance at the Hamburg State Opera in 1963 and at both the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Vienna State Opera in 1964.
19.
In 1964 Martina Arroyo broke new ground outside the traditional opera house by making an appearance on national network television in the production of Feliz Borinquen for the CBS Repertoire Workshop under the musical direction of Alfredo Antonini.
20.
Martina Arroyo immediately became a favorite singer at that house portraying mostly Verdi heroines and the Met became her principal home from that point up until 1978.
21.
Martina Arroyo was notably the first black person to portray the role of Elsa in Wagner's Lohengrin in 1968, not just at the Met, but in all of opera history.
22.
Martina Arroyo returned to both companies a number of times during the 1970s as Verdi heroines and in parts like the title roles in Puccini's Tosca and Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos.
23.
Martina Arroyo sang Amelia in Un ballo in maschera for her debuts with both the San Francisco Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
24.
Martina Arroyo returned to Chicago to sing her first Amelia Grimaldi in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra in 1974.
25.
Martina Arroyo remained very busy in the world's major opera houses through 1979 singing mostly Verdi, Puccini, and Strauss heroines and other roles from the lirico-spinto repertoire.
26.
Martina Arroyo portrayed herself in an episode of The Odd Couple titled "Your Mother Wears Army Boots", which originally aired on January 16,1975.
27.
Martina Arroyo returned to the Met in 1983 to sing "Fu la sorte" from Verdi's Aida for the company's Centennial Gala.
28.
Martina Arroyo returned to sing Aida and Santuzza; making her last appearance and 199th performance at the Metropolitan Opera on October 31,1986.
29.
Martina Arroyo came out of retirement in 1991 for one last performance in the world premiere of Leslie Adams's Blake, an opera whose story is set in pre-Civil War America when slavery was still a reality.
30.
Martina Arroyo performed often with the New York Philharmonic under conductor Leonard Bernstein who particularly admired her voice in such repertoire as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Missa Solemnis.
31.
Martina Arroyo's talents extended beyond the concert stage into the realm of live network television.
32.
Martina Arroyo is a recipient of a 2010 Opera Honors Award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
33.
Martina Arroyo has recorded important 20th-century music, including Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder and the African Oratorio by Carlo Franci.
34.
Martina Arroyo sang in the world premieres of two works: Karlheinz Stockhausen's Momente and Samuel Barber's Andromache's Farewell.
35.
Since her official retirement from singing in 1989 Martina Arroyo has amassed significant teaching credits, including stints at Louisiana State University, UCLA, University of Delaware, Wilberforce University, the International Sommerakademie-Mozarteum in Salzburg and Indiana University.
36.
Martina Arroyo has given master classes nationally and internationally, and judged several competitions including the George London Competition and the Tchaikovsky International Competition.
37.
Martina Arroyo is active on the Boards of Trustees of Hunter College and Carnegie Hall.
38.
Martina Arroyo was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000.