Awards

National Academies - 2000

American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Distinguished Professor (Emeritus) - 1997

About Martina Arroyo

Martina Arroyo earned her B.S. in romance languages from Hunter College in 1956. After completing her undergraduate education, she eventually began pursuing opera full-time. She began her teaching career at the Indiana University (IU) School of Music as a professor of voice in 1993. She retired in 2007 with the title Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Voice.

For a generation, from the stages of the world's most prestigious opera houses - New York's Metropolitan Opera, the Paris Opera, London's Covent Garden, Milan's La Scala, the Vienna State Opera, and the Buenos Aires Teatro Colón - to the concert halls of Salzburg, Berlin, Rome, Paris and New York, the name of Arroyo has been synonymous with music making of the highest order.

Famous for her interpretations of Verdi, Puccini, Strauss, and Mozart, Arroyo has had the honor of three opening night performances at the Metropolitan Opera, two of them in consecutive seasons. At ease with contemporary music, she has premiered works of William Bolcom and Carlo Franci and was chosen to present the world premiere of Samuel Barber's Andromache's Farewell as well as Karlheinz Stockhausen's Momente. She later recorded both pieces and performed them throughout the United States and Europe.

Arroyo has made more than 50 recordings of major operas and orchestral works with such conductors as Leonard Bernstein, Karl Böhm, Rafael Kubelik, Zubin Mehta, Thomas Schippers, Ricardo Muti, Claudio Abbado, James Levine, and Colin Davis. Her recordings of Barber's Andromache's Farewell; Verdi's Requiem, Aïda (La Scala, Munich, and Teatro Colón), Un ballo in maschera, La forza del destino (in both the standard and the 1862 versions) and I vespri siciliani; Mozart's Don Giovanni (both as Donna Anna and Donna Elvira); Beethoven's Missa Solemnis; Handel's Judas Maccabeus; Mahler's Symphony No. 8; Rossini's Stabat Mater and Schönberg's Gurrelieder have all been recently reissued on CD.

Arroyo has served as an adjudicator of many prestigious international competitions such as the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition of Belgium, the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, and the ARD International Music Competition in Munich. Having delighted television and radio audiences with over twenty appearances on the "Tonight Show" on NBC-TV, she is a frequent guest and moderator on radio's "Singers Roundtable", the live intermission feature of the Saturday afternoon broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera.

Appointed by President Gerald Ford, Arroyo served on the National Endowment for the Arts for six years and continues to participate as an invited panelist and moderator. In 2002, Arroyo was inducted as a Fellow into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Amici di Verdi in London, Citizens Committee for New York City, and Opera Index are a few of the many other groups that have honored her. In addition, she remains actively associated with the National Council on the Arts as an Ambassador for the Arts. She sits on the Board of Directors of Carnegie Hall, The Metropolitan Opera Guild, and The Collegiate Chorale, as well as The Voice Foundation, which presented her with the V.E.R.A award in 2006.