Splendid Retrospective of A Brilliant Singing Career That Is
John Kwok | New York, NY USA | 01/12/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"It is most atypical of me to review something at Amazon.com if I haven't heard, handled or read it beforehand, but I must make an exception here. Having heard the now 94 year-old Marta Eggerth sing some of these songs live last night at a special program held in her honor at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, all I can say is that I am in awe of her splendid ability to sing with such compassion and clarity at her age, still retaining much of her immense vocal range for which she became well known on stage and screen from the late 1920s to early 1960s in both Europe and North America. Mme. Eggerth is truly a living legend, the last, still glorious, survivor from Vienna's great "Silver Age" of operetta, having had the good fortune to befriend such notable operetta composers as Franz Lehar, Emmerich Kalman and Robert Stolz, who also composed scores especially with her in mind. The most notable was undoubtedly Franz Lehar, the composer of the classic Viennese operetta "The Merry Widow" (Eventually Mme. Eggerth and her husband, the distinguished Polish tenor Jan Kiepura, would tour both continents performing "The Merry Widow" more than two thousand times.), who would continue composing scores for her after she moved to the United States. More recently, among Mme. Eggerth's artistic triumphs last year was a Cabaret show at the Neue Gallerie's Cafe Sabarasky and two recital/lectures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, both "neighbors" on Manhattan's fashionable "Museum Mile" Fifth Avenue. This two-CD set collection is a splendid retrospective of Mme. Eggerth's brilliant singing career, with the first CD containing early recordings of opera arias and songs she made famous in her movies, and the second containing her more recent work, especially from the period from 1995 to 2002."
Track Listings (23) - Disc #1