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Marta Eggerth (17 April 1912 – 26 December 2013) was a Hungarian actress and singer from "The Silver Age of Operetta". Many of the 20th century's most famous operetta composers, including Franz Lehár, Fritz Kreisler, Robert Stolz, Oscar Straus, and Paul Abraham, composed works especially for her.
On February 10, 1938, Jan Kiepura made his debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera, singing the role of Rodolfo in Giacomo Puccini's La bohème. He went on to sing leading roles in Tosca, Rigoletto, Carmen, Manon, and Aida, as well as performing up to 80 concerts a year throughout the United States and Canada. While Kiepura toured the United States, Eggerth was signed by the Shubert Theatre on Broadway to appear in Richard Rodgers' musical Higher and Higher. She subsequently signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Hollywood and, during the early 1940s, made two movies with Judy Garland: For Me and My Gal in 1942 (also Gene Kelly's first major film role) and Presenting Lily Mars in 1943.
In Chicago, Eggerth and Kiepura performed together on the operatic stage in La bohème to rave reviews. In 1943, they starred together on Broadway at the Majestic Theater in a revised production of Lehár's The Merry Widow, with Robert Stolz conducting and choreography by George Balanchine. They would eventually perform The Merry Widow more than 2,000 times, in five languages throughout Europe and America. In 1945, they were back on Broadway theatre together in the musical Polonaise. After World War II, they returned to France touring and making films, such as Brilliant Waltz (1949) and The Land of Smiles (1952), before bringing The Merry Widow to London's Palace Theatre in 1954.
Throughout her career, Eggerth maintained active recital tours throughout Europe, Canada and the United States, combining her extensive repertoire of , opera, film songs, and especially Viennese operetta. Kiepura's equally active recital schedule often meant that the couple would be temporarily separated. But the couple's international tours often brought them together in the same city, where they would perform to delighted crowds. In London, they gave two sold-out concerts in one week at the Royal Albert Hall in 1956. The couple continued singing throughout the 1950s and 1960s with more productions of The Merry Widow in the United States, concerts and other productions in Europe. In 1965 they brought The Merry Widow back to Berlin for yet another successful run.
Kiepura died in 1966. Eggerth stopped singing at this time for several years. Finally, persuaded by her mother, she decided to revive her career. In the 1970s she began to make regular television appearances, and to actively perform concerts in Europe. In 1982, she returned to the American stage to co-star in the Tom Jones/Harvey Schmidt musical Colette opposite Diana Rigg in Seattle and Denver, and later in Stephen Sondheim's Follies in Pittsburgh.
In 1999, at the age of 87, she sang on the stage of the Vienna State Opera in a special televised matinée concert hosted by opera impresario and historian Marcel Prawy, to mark that opera house's first production of Lehár's The Merry Widow. She sang a medley from the operetta in four languages and received a spontaneous standing ovation. She repeated this medley in 2000, at a gala to mark the 200th anniversary of Vienna's Theater an der Wien.
In 2001, Eggerth returned to London for "An Interview-in-Concert" at a sold-out Wigmore Hall, accompanied by conductor-pianist Alexander Frey and hosted by British author and critic Brendon Carroll. She also sang at the annual Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation concerts at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. She was seen in Austria on a popular television detective series, Tatort, playing the role of an aging diva suspected in a murder case. Appearances in 2006 and 2007 included two concerts with interviews at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; sold-out shows at the Café Sabarsky in Neue Galerie entertaining audiences with her pre-war Viennese/Berlin cabaret style of wit, artistry and song; a concert and discussion held as part of New York University's Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes; an appearance at the Austrian Cultural Forum as part of their Mostly Operetta series; operetta at the Manhattan School of Music; and an appearance at the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged (JASA). Her last performance was at age 99 in 2011.
In 2003, Patria Music released a retrospective double CD of her songs entitled My Life My Song.
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