Márta Eggerth - obituary - Telegraph Marta Eggerth in 'The Merry Widow' with her husband, Jan Kiepura (TIME&LIFE/GETTY) Márta Eggerth was born in Budapest on April 17 1912, the daughter of a banker who was a talented amateur pianist and of a dramatic soprano who gave up her singing career for her daughter. Márta was eight when she sang an aria from The Barber of Seville, and she made her stage debut at 11 in Pál Ábráham's operetta Mannequins. The press declared her "Hungary's national idol," and by the age of 17 she had toured Europe several times. Kálmán engaged her at the Vienna State Opera to understudy for Adele Kern, a well-known coloratura, in his operetta The Violet of Montmartre, and after six performances Márta Eggerth was called on to step in when Kern was indisposed. The critics declared her a sensation, and Reinhardt invited her to Hamburg for Die Fledermaus. Now the German film directors came calling, and soon she was working in Berlin, where she made more than 40 movies. Meanwhile, the 17-year-old Márta Eggerth had seen Kiepura, who was 10 years her senior, in Puccini's Turandot and vowed that one day she would marry him. But it was not until 1934, when they were both working on the set of My Heart is Calling You, with music by Robert Stolz, that they first met. At first she found him cold and distant, but they married in 1936. With the rise of the Nazis the couple, both of whom had Jewish mothers, planned to settle in southern France; but at the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe they were in New York, where Kiepura was busy singing Rodolfo in Puccini's La Bohème at the Metropolitan Opera. Their respective careers now blossomed in the United States - his in high opera, hers in operetta. She went to Hollywood to make Me and My Gal (1942), but her big number, The Spell of the Waltz, ended up on the cutting room floor of a studio that felt there was room for only one star - Judy Garland. Márta's effort survives on a director's cut album. She also appeared with Garland in Presenting Lily Mars (1943), but by now Tinseltown had lost its appeal. "I hated Hollywood - hated it," she once told Anne Midgette from the New York Times. I was used to playing the lead, and in Hollywood I was second. Back in New York with her husband, the couple embarked on their Merry Widow marathon, conducted by Stolz. Soon they had acquired an elegant house at Rye, north of New York City, where they entertained the likes of Vladimir Horowitz and Marian Anderson. Marta Eggerth with her husband, Jan Kiepura, in 1945 (GETTY/HULTON ARCHIVE) After Kiepura's sudden death in 1966, Márta Eggerth withdrew from the stage. Other than occasional television appearances she was hardly seen until 1984, when she sang in Seattle with Diana Rigg in Colette, a musical based on the life of the French writer, though it failed to reach Broadway. She also appeared in a production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies in Pittsburgh. In 1999, 70 years after her debut, Márta Eggerth returned to the Vienna State Opera, where she reprised a medley from The Merry Widow in four languages and was rewarded with a standing ovation. Afterwards she was accosted in the street by an elderly passer-by. "Excuse me," he asked, "weren't you once Márta Eggerth?" There was also an interview-in-concert at the Wigmore Hall in London in 2001 and occasional Berlin-style cabaret appearances at the Sabarsky, a Viennese-style café in New York. A CD of her greatest moments was released in 2003. In 1935 Márta Eggerth told an interviewer from the New York Times of how she abstained from alcohol, a practice she continued all her life. When her inquisitor challenged her about her predilection for Tokay, the Hungarian wine, she chortled, and scolded him with the words: "Tokay, this is medicine." With or without alcohol, her career had been so busy in the 1930s that Márta Eggerth did not always have time to enjoy the fruits of her labour. Victor Janson's The Blue from the Sky (1932) was one such film; her mother had simply told her that it was "good." Márta Eggerth finally saw it for the first time in 2010 when the Museum of Modern Art in New York included it as part of the Weimar Cinema: 1913-33 season, the announcement of her presence drawing gasps of amazement from the audience. Touchingly, she was still able to hum along to the music. On another occasion she recalled how, while renting an apartment in pre-war Vienna, she had agreed to a neighbour using her piano while she was out. I came back, the whole room was dark with cigar smoke and there were socks on my bed. He was a little crazy. It was the conductor [Otto] Klemperer. Asked at the time of her 100th birthday how it felt to reach her centenary, Márta Eggerth, ever sprightly, replied: "I don't know. You must ask me when I am 200 what it was like to be 100, and then I will be able to tell you. Márta Eggerth is survived by her two sons. Márta Eggerth, born April 17 1912, died December 26 2013