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Having studied at the Franz Liszt Acadamy in Budapest, Hugarian soprano Eva Marton
made her professional debut as Kate Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly at
Margareten Island summer festival. At the Hungarian State Opera,
she made her debut als Queen of Shemaka in Rimsky-Korsakov's Le Coq d'Or in 1968. In 1972, she was invited by Christoph von Dohnanyi
to make her debut as the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro at
the Frankfurt Opera, and sang Matilde in Rossini's Guglielmo
Tell at
the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence under the baton of Riccardo
Muti, and returned to Budapest to sing Odabella in Verdis Attila.
In 1973, Ms. Marton made her debut at the Vienna
State Opera, to great acclaim as Tosca, and soon after she sang Tatiana
there in a new production of Eugene Onegin, which led to a series of
debuts with many leading international opera houses. At the Metropolitan
Opera New York she made her debut in 1976 singing Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
From 1981 to 1986 she was selected three times among the best artists of the
year by the New York Times for such roles as the Empress in Die Frau ohne
Schatten, Elisabeth in Tannhäuser and Tosca. In 1977 s
he joined the Hamburg State Opera, singing the Empress in Die Frau ohne Schatten,
and also made her San Francisco Opera debut in the title role of Aida;
in 197 8
she made her debut at La Scala as Leonora in Il Trovatore, and at the
Lyric Opera of Chicago she appeared for the first time in 1979 as Maddalena
in Giordanos Andrea Chenier. At the Bayreuth Festival she sang both
Elisabeth and Venus in Tannhäuser (1977/78), at the Munich Opera
Festival she appeared for the first time in the
title role of Die Ägyptische Helena with Wolfgang Sawallisch conducting
(1981), at the Salzburg Festival as Leonore in Fidelio in 1982 and
1983 under the baton of Lorin Maazel, in the title role of Elektra with
Claudio Abbado in 1989 and as the Dyer`s Wife in Die Frau ohne Schatten in
1992 with Sir Georg Solti conducting.
Ms. Marton has become one of the leading interpreters of Brünnhilde in
Wagner's Ring, however Brünnhilde is just another
heroine in the extensive gallery of her definitive interpretations that also
include the title roles of Salome, La Gioconda, Leonora in La
Forza del Destino and, most of all, the title role o f
Puccinis last opera Turandot which she first sang at the Vienna State
Opera in 1983. Since then she has been hailed simply as "the Turandot of today",
and has sung this role nearly 200 times and with every major opera comp any
including the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Arena di Verona, San Francisco,
Chicago, Barcelona, Houston, Washington, in six different TV and video productions,
including one from the Vienna
State Opera directed by Harold Prince, one from the Metropolitan Opera in a
spectacular Franco Zeffirelli production and in a production designed by David
Hockney and filmed at the San Francisco Opera. She recorded the opera twice,
for CBS conducted by Lorin Maazel and for RCA, with Roberto Abbado.
On television she has also been seen as Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, Elsa
in Lohengrin, Leonora in Il Trovatore, all from the Met stage.
She has appeared in two different versions
of Tosca (from the Arena of Verona and the Sydney Opera House) in La
Gioconda and Elektra from the Vienna State Opera, Andrea Chenier from
La Scala and Die Frau ohne Schatten from the Salzburg Festival. All
of these TV films are now available on home video or DVD. Ms. Marton has also
become one
of the most recorded artists. She has more than 20 complete operas to her credit,
as well as solo recital programmes, aria albums, and symphonic works. Her many
recordings
include a full-length La Gioconda, Andrea Chenier, Fedora, Turandot, Tosca,
La Fanciulla del West, Bluebeards's Castle, Violanta, Tiefland, Salome, Elektra,
La Wally, Semirama (Respighi) Lohengrin and the entire Ring cycle
under the baton of Bernard Haitink.
Her engagements included the complete new Zubin Mehta - led Ring cycle at the Lyric
Opera of Chicago (1996), as well as Elektra in Washington and Lyon under
the baton of Kent Nagano (1997),Turandot at
the Metropolitan Opera and the Vienna State Opera (1997), a spectacular new
production at the Hamburg State Opera in 1998 of Lohengrin (Ortrud),
as well as a New Production of Jenufa in Hamburg with her sensationally
acclaimed debut in the extremely moving role of the Kostelnicka,
followed by another series of Tosca performance at the Metropolitan Opera (1999).
In her native country Hungary she joined the Popstar Miklós
Varga to record the song "Europa" ,
the hymn for the 1998 European Athletics Championships, taking place in Budapest
in August 1998.
Her most recent new roles were Kundry in Parsifal in
Barcelona and Lisbon ( 2001)
as well as Isolde in the modern staging of Ruth Berghaus at Hamburg State Opera
in 2000. Having recovered from a severe injury suffered in an accident on stage
at the end of a Tristan performance, she acted and sung in the movie
version of the Hungarian National Opera Bank Ban by Hungarian
composer Ferenc Erkel (2001/2002) which will be prepared for DVD. Concert appearances
and recitals showed also Eva Marton`s suggestive interpretations of songs and
compositions by Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner and especially
Arnold Schönberg
and Gustav Mahler.
Since her debut as the Dyer's Wife in Die Frau ohne Schatten by Richard
Strauss in 1992 under the baton of Sir Georg Solti and in a production that
presented this opera without any cuts for
the first time since its world premiere in 1919, Ms. Marton has been highly
acclaimed for being one of still only a few sopranos to sing this uncut
version. Different modern stagings showed her appearing in Berlin (Philippe
Arlaud) under the baton of Christian Thielemann 1998, Barcelona (Andreas Homoki)
2000 and Frankfurt (Christof Nel, Sebastian Weigle conducting) 2003 . During
the Cultural Olympics of Greece, Michael Hampe´s
spectacular
production at the Megaron in Athens in October 2002 was a worldwide broadcast
and also taped for TV and DVD.
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