Martina Arroyo (1936-2026)

The American soprano Martina Arroyo, who excelled in Verdi and was the first Black singer to play Elsa in Wagner’s Lohengrin, has died aged 90.

Born in Harlem in 1936, Arroyo’s path to an operatic career was a rather unorthodox one. The daughter of a Puerto Rican engineer and an amateur pianist, she loved music from an early age, learning the piano under her mother’s guidance, singing at her neighbourhood church and in glee clubs, and falling in love with musical theatre through attending shows on Broadway with her family.

Arroyo began voice lessons aged fourteen whilst studying at the prestigious Hunter College High School, when she persuaded staff to admit her to a graduate opera workshop through sheer force of personality: after auditioning with the Jewel Song from Gounod’s Faust, she was referred to the renowned voice teacher Marinka Gurewich (whose students included Grace Bumbry and Florence Quivar) by the programme’s director, who described the cheerful, determined young girl as ‘a future star’.

After graduating from Hunter College with a degree in Romance languages, Arroyo taught English at a school in the Bronx whilst continuing her lessons with Gurewich and studying for a Master’s in comparative literature at New York University. Although she still had no aspirations to pursue a full-time career in music, Arroyo soon left teaching for social work in order to allow her more flexibility to study voice and take on occasional singing engagements; she made her Carnegie Recital Hall debut whilst working at the East End Welfare Center and secured an agent on the basis of her performance.

After winning a prize at the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air in 1958, Arroyo was admitted to the house’s Kathryn Long School, which led to her professional opera debut in the US premiere of Ildebrando Pizzetti’s Murder in the Cathedral; reviewing the performance at Carnegie Hall, The New York Times described her as a singer of ‘remarkable potential, with a voice of amplitude’.

Arroyo made her Met debut the following year as the Heavenly Voice in Verdi’s Don Carlo (she later joked that the role was so tiny that her mother missed her appearance by taking an ill-timed bathroom-break!) and was invited back for numerous productions in the early 1960s, including small roles in Wagner’s Ring Cycle under Erich Leinsdorf.

On the advice of the Met’s General Manager Rudolf Bing, Arroyo made regular trips to Europe in order to build her career in more substantial roles, achieving considerable success in contemporary music as well as in core operatic repertoire; in 1962 she sang in the partial world premiere of Stockhausen’s Momente, and a year later she became a principal artist at Zurich Opera, where she debuted a number of leading roles including Verdi’s Aida. In parallel to her burgeoning opera career, Arroyo maintained a busy schedule of concert work back in New York, including the world premiere of Samuel Barber’s Andromache’s Farewell and Paul Hindemith’s When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd under the baton of the composer.

It was as Aida that Arroyo made her true breakthrough at the Metropolitan Opera in February 1965, when Bing asked her to step in to replace Birgit Nilsson on 48 hours’ notice. Arroyo, who was back in New York to celebrate her birthday with family, initially thought that his panicked phone-call was a practical joke, but the success of the performance altered the trajectory of her entire career: The New York Times hailed her as ‘one of the most gorgeous voices before the public today’ and the Met offered her a long-term contract, cementing a relationship which would see her notching up almost 200 performances at the house over the next two decades.

Arroyo quickly became a house favourite in heavyweight Italian repertoire, enjoying acclaim as Verdi’s Elisabetta in Don Carlo, the Leonoras of Il trovatore and La forza del destino, Amelia in Un ballo in maschera, and the title-roles in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Ponchielli’s La Gioconda. In 1968 she made history by becoming the first Black soprano to play Elsa in Wagner’s Lohengrin, following in the footsteps of Grace Bumbry (a fellow student of Marinka Gurewich) who had caused a sensation as ‘the Black Venus’ in Tannhäuser at Bayreuth seven years earlier.

Although her presence on the international stage contributed greatly to the growing visibility of Black artists in the 1960s and 70s, Arroyo never felt that she had had to overcome racial barriers whilst forging her career, telling arts writer Tony Villecco ‘I didn't have any problems as a Black singer that I knew of’ – though the fact that she was still in the minority at the Met was underlined when she quipped ‘No honey, I’m the other one!’ to a doorman at the theatre who mistook her for Leontyne Price. Arroyo’s good humour and sparky, irreverent wit endeared her to colleagues, fans and students alike, and reached a wider audience thanks to her regular appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Arroyo’s career also blossomed well beyond her ‘home’ theatre throughout the late 60s and 70s, with debuts at Covent Garden (again as Aida), the Opéra National de Paris, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Teatro Colón, and San Francisco Opera. Whilst Italian roles dominated her repertoire, she also enjoyed considerable success as Valentine in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots (recorded for Decca, with Joan Sutherland as Marguerite), Senta in Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer, and both Donna Anna and Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

Her relatively small but distinguished discography also testifies to her extensive work in concert and oratorio, including Beethoven’s Missa solemnis (with Eugene Ormandy), Verdi’s Requiem (with Leonard Bernstein), Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (with Rafael Kubelík), and Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder (with Norman Del Mar).

Arroyo announced her retirement in 1989 but continued to perform in opera and concert for several years: in 1991 she sang the title-role in Turandot, and went on to take part in the world premieres of Leslie Adams’s musical drama Blake and Carlo Franci’s African Oratorio. She later threw herself into teaching and coaching with a passion, holding positions at institutions including Louisiana State University, Wilberforce University, the University of Delaware, and the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. It was through her work in Indiana that she developed the role-preparation programme which evolved into The Martina Arroyo Foundation, which was launched in 2003 and numbers Ryan Speedo Green, Jennifer Rowley, Jonathan Tetelman and Michele Angelini among its alumni.

Arroyo was recognised in the 2013 Kennedy Center Honors, when the board declared that ‘few in her generation have been so fearless, or so successful, triumphant across the repertory’. She died at home in Manhattan on 13th October.

Martina Arroyo - a selected discography