Those who had seen and heard Éva Marton at her Liszt Academy graduation recital – singing arias of Manon, Tosca, and Tatyana – might justly have assumed that a glittering career was virtually assured. András Rajk, the distinguished critic of Népszabadság [Hungary’s leading socialist-era daily], heralded the young soprano as a “heaven-sent talent”. Yet her engagement at the Hungarian State Opera was not entirely without difficulty, and, paradoxical as it may seem, one of the greatest dramatic sopranos of our age began her operatic career in a spoken role. After two minor appearances at the open-air stage on Margaret Island [Margitsziget, Budapest], she made her début at the Magyar Állami Operaház (Hungarian State Opera) on 19 October 1968 as the Actress-Queen in Sándor Szokolay’s musical drama Hamlet. A month later she was entrusted with her first significant assignment, when a colleague withdrew from the female lead in Rimsky-Korsakov’s fairytale opera The Golden Cockerel. Thus, in the second cast at the Erkel Theatre [the secondary venue of the Hungarian State Opera, in Budapest], she appeared as the Queen of Shemakha. [1] “Éva Marton caused a genuine sensation with the beauty of her voice, the impetuosity of her singing, and the appealing intimacy of her portrayal,” wrote János Lózsy in Népszabadság. [2] Critics, audiences, and the Opera House’s management alike were quick to discern her exceptional gifts and tireless capacity for work.

In the spring of 1970, the Opera staged Handel’s Rodelinda, a formidable challenge for any singer. The tautness of baroque music, its rhythmic demands, the profusion of ornamentation and the difficulties of intonation demanded extraordinary concentration and discipline. In the title role Marton did far more than merely cope: with “disarming lyricism and expressive singing she rose above her peers”. [3]

Her gallery of Puccinian heroines began with the title role in Manon Lescaut, first sung at the Hungarian State Opera House on 30 April 1969. It was a daunting undertaking for a débutante, especially in the shadow of Erzsébet Házy [1929–1982, one of Hungary’s most celebrated sopranos], who had won some of her greatest triumphs in the part. With minimal rehearsal time, Marton was obliged to create the character virtually on stage, a figure requiring distinct vocal and dramatic colours in each act. Though she returned to the role in numerous productions, fresh challenges gradually pushed Manon aside in her Puccini repertoire. On 3 November 1970 she first appeared as Tosca, a part destined to become emblematic of her career. At the same time the Erkel Ferenc Singing Competition [a major Hungarian vocal competition named after composer Ferenc Erkel] promised to confer national celebrity – yet there was no real question of her choice. For Marton, the role of Tosca was imperative. “From the very first moment I felt at ease in the role; it seemed as though Puccini had composed it for me. I knew at once that Tosca would be one of life’s companions”, she told music historian András Batta in her biography. [4]

In 1973 she appeared at the Wiener Staatsoper in the role, but perhaps the most memorable staging was Götz Friedrich’s radical reimagining of Tosca at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich in 1976. The Münchener Merkur captured the essence of her success: “Eva Marton is already outwardly the ideal Tosca: tall, commanding, every inch the prima donna as she first enters the church. […] A shudder at the sight of the tortured Cavaradossi, a frightened gesture as she betrays Angelotti’s hiding place, a weary, bowed head as she yields to Scarpia’s demands – all unforgettable. Her vocal endowment defies praise. A perfectly balanced dramatic soprano throughout all registers, with resonant depths and rounded pianissimi. The upper notes shine with radiant brilliance and possess astounding, penetrating power. Even the fierce outbursts of Act II lie well within the compass of her voice and temperament. The audience sensed that something extraordinary had taken place: an almost unknown singer who outshone the world-famous stars, Plácido Domingo and Sherrill Milnes, both in prime form.” [5]

In 1980, at La Scala in Milan, she assumed the role of Tosca by happy accident, singing opposite Luciano Pavarotti and Ingvar Wixell. The announced Raina Kabaivanska withdrew only days before the première. The critics, like the public, greeted Marton’s performance in superlatives, and she was awarded La Scala’s Silver Rose. The sole “defect” the press could find was that Éva Marton had not been born Italian. Between 1970 and 2003 she appeared as Tosca in thirty-six cities, including the world’s most distinguished opera houses.

For many years her name was equally bound up with Puccini’s other celebrated heroine, Turandot. As she herself remarked, this was the role with which “walls can be torn down and others built anew”. [6] She first impersonated Turandot in Vienna in 1983 under the baton of Lorin Maazel. By then she had already “toppled many walls”, though the long triumphal path still lay ahead. That same year she also appeared in Hamburg and Boston, and at the Metropolitan Opera’s centenary gala (22 October 1983) she opened the celebrations with the princess’s great aria, In questa reggia. La Scala did all it could to secure “the Queen of the High C’s” for its season-opener that year, but the Met even under diplomatic pressure, would not release her, as she was then preparing for its new production of Beethoven’s Fidelio.

Her Scala début as Turandot came two years later, on 6 April 1985, in Franco Zeffirelli’s staging, conducted once again by Lorin Maazel. Zeffirelli also directed the Met’s première of Turandot on 12 March 1987, where “Eva Marton as the cruel, icy princess Turandot, poured out volcanic tones as she sang her great aria In questa reggia.” [7] One of the most sumptuous productions of the century, it starred Plácido Domingo as Calaf and Leona Mitchell as Liù, conducted by James Levine.

Éva Marton’s career was above all shaped by the heroines of Puccini, Wagner and Richard Strauss, her voice capable of sustaining the weight of their roles. Yet Verdi’s women also held a central place in her repertoire. As she explained to András Batta, this did not imply that Verdi was any easier for a singer: whereas “with Verdi every register must resonate evenly, there can be no break in the vocal line”, “clarity, line, and the arch of each phrase are especially important,” “with Wagner it is often the absence of rhythm that betrays a singer’s shortcomings. Verdi can pull, stretch the singer along, while Wagner’s phrases are more compact. Verdi requires the voice to move across a wide range, demanding far greater flexibility.” [8]

On 7 July 1972 she was entrusted with the role of Odabella in Verdi’s Attila at Margaret Island Open-Air Theatre. Whereas her earlier Verdi roles – A Voice from Heaven (Don Carlos), Amelia Grimaldi (Simon Boccanegra), and Alice Ford (Falstaff) – had marked the successive steps of a beginner’s career, the king’s daughter from Aquileia represented a supreme test of voice and character, crowning her early years on the Hungarian stage. Her interpretation, alongside such distinguished partners as József Gregor (Attila), Sándor Kónya (Ezio), and conductor Lamberto Gardelli, earned her the designation “world-class.” András Rajk summed up her achievement in daily Népszava: “For decades no more complete operatic artist has appeared upon our horizon. With today’s vocal and dramatic culture, with her free and polished movement on stage, her bearing, and with her beauty – enhanced by the nobility of her interpretation – she would be at home equally on the stages of Verona or Salzburg as here on Margaret Island.” [9]

In this, the critic indeed foresaw her future: in Salzburg she made her début in 1982 in Beethoven’s Fidelio, and in the Arena di Verona in 1984 she appeared in the title role of Tosca. She had first sung the female lead in Don Carlos, Elisabeth, in Brussels in 1974, and later performed the part in Vienna, Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, and once in Budapest. Also in 1974, she débuted as Leonora in La forza del destino at Frankfurt Oper, where only weeks later, on 20 November, she sang for the first time with Plácido Domingo, who took the role of Don Alvaro. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung testified that even though Domingo was already an international star, the triumph was not his alone: “The noisy celebration had to be shared with Eva Marton, who brought Leonora magnificently and with overwhelming intensity to life.” [10]

On 20 February 1983, the Catalan audience at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona encountered her Leonora in the same work. A special bond was immediately formed between singer and public, as the local review recorded: “When the applause at last subsided, following one of soprano Eva Marton’s brilliant portrayals, a voice from the audience cried out: ‘That is how Verdi should be sung!’” [11] Indeed, Marton gave the very model of how Verdi must be performed, demonstrating the lyrical approach required for the tragic heroine of this great drama. With assurance, a resonant voice, expressive phrasing, and profound identification with her character, Marton’s performance was literally exemplary. To the perfection of her art is joined a distinctive dramatic instinct, one that finds an immediate path to the audience. The exclamation was entirely justified: “That is how Verdi should be sung!” [12]

While she sang Amelia in Un ballo in maschera only three times at Frankfurt Oper in 1976, Aida – first performed in 1977 at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels – remained in her repertoire for five years. In San Francisco, at the War Memorial Opera House, she sang Aida under Gianandrea Gavazzeni, the same conductor who had led a Budapest performance of Don Carlos years earlier in which Marton had sung the Voice from Heaven. Equally memorable was her Aida at the Terme di Caracalla in Rome, where the première of 5 July 1980 incorporated the ancient ruins into the stage design itself. On 18 June 1977 she took part in the Frankfurt première of Otello, her final new production with the company, conducted by its intendant Christoph von Dohnányi. Thus, on her birthday she bid farewell to the Frankfurt public as Desdemona. She later sang the role eleven times in Hamburg.

Her greatest Verdi triumphs, alongside La forza del destino, came as Leonora in Il trovatore. On 17 June 1978 she made her début at Teatro Alla Scala, without ever having sung the role elsewhere. Her colleagues were chosen from the finest: Ermanno Mauro (Manrico), Fiorenza Cossotto (Azucena), Vincente Sardinero (Count di Luna), and Luigi Roni (Ferrando). The production was directed by Luchino Visconti and conducted by Zubin Mehta. “The unquestioned star of the evening was Eva Marton as Leonora. Her voice resounded splendidly and with richness in both her great arias, her portrayal was convincing even in the pants role. It was no wonder the enthusiastic audience gave her particular acclaim”, reported the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. [13]

As a reward for this brilliant success came a Hungarian première: on 11 November 1978, she appeared as Judith in Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle. In La Scala’s two centuries of existence, this marked the very first performance of the opera on that stage in the Hungarian language. Her final Il Trovatore performances were with the no less prestigious Metropolitan Opera in New York, including the 1988 season-opener, in which she and Luciano Pavarotti were the stars. “Despite not having sung a Verdi role for years, owing to her Brünnhildes, Turandots, and Ortruds, she showed that she still commands today’s opera stages in this repertoire. […] That today’s celebrated dramatic soprano is the only singer in the world who not only fills the house but, with the incredible speed of her coloratura, accomplishes what even such great predecessors as Maria Callas and Leontyne Price, to whom the role seemed closer on their famous recordings. This points with painful clarity to how rare an authentic Verdi soprano has become”, enthused the critic of Opernglas. [14] Marton bade farewell to her Verdi roles with Leonora in La forza del destino at the Wiener Staatsoper on 20 June 1992.

After some hesitation, in 1974 Éva Marton agreed to undertake her first Richard Strauss role, persuaded in no small part by Gérard Mortier, artistic director of Frankfurt Oper, and by the magnitude of the challenge. The Empress in Die Frau ohne Schatten “travels a rocky path, from a gazelle turned elemental spirit to a woman who, through love and compassion, comes to cast a shadow.” “After my initial misgivings, I felt a calm, even a kind of intimate relationship with the role as I studied it, though the Empress is an immense role and an immense challenge for both singer and actress. A superhuman being, she demands superhuman vocal resources, corresponding to the stern domain of spirits and rocks. […] Such nearly insoluble challenges are the greatest tests for anyone bringing a music drama to life”, [15] she later recalled in conversation with András Batta.

After her Frankfurt début she went on, in October 1977, to Hamburg Staatsoper in a spectacular production with Birgit Nilsson (the Dyer’s Wife), Ruth Hesse (the Nurse), René Kollo (the Emperor) and Donald McIntyre (Barak, the Dyer). Directed by Kurt Horres, this was the first new production of Christoph von Dohnányi’s tenure as Hamburg’s general director. Besides Frankfurt and Hamburg, Marton’s Empress was celebrated at no fewer than nine major opera houses – Geneva, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Chicago, Milan, Vienna, and New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Of them all, she regarded the Met as the most memorable: “In New York, at the Met in October 1981, I sang the Empress in Nathaniel Merrill’s production. Birgit Nilsson was the Dyer’s Wife, Mignon Dunn the Nurse, Gerd Brenneis the Emperor, and Franz-Ferdinand Nentwig Barak. The conductor, Erich Leinsdorf, treated me as though I were his daughter. It took great courage and steel nerves to sing in New York after Leonie Rysanek, the darling of the public. In spite of the overwhelming atmosphere and daunting expectations, that night in October 1981 the Empress became one of the key roles of my life. I laid down my calling card. It should be known that, at Birgit’s request, I sang the Empress in place of the originally planned Rysanek, who in turn sang Ariadne in Chicago in my stead. […] After the performance Birgit Nilsson and I stood before the curtain, facing the tumultuous ovation. Birgit quietly slipped behind, leaving me alone before the public, as though passing me the baton. I shall never forget her: an extraordinary artist and an extraordinary human being.” [16]

Marton was among those exceptional performers who also triumphed in Strauss’s other “hellishly difficult” character, the Dyer’s Wife. In 1992, she performed the role on the stage of the Großes Festspielhaus at the Salzburger Osterfestspiele and later that summer she sang it in Götz Friedrich’s production at the Salzburger Festspiele. After further appearances in Berlin, Barcelona and Athens, she sang it for the last time in Frankfurt in 2003, where she had first appeared as the Empress.

If the statistics are reckoned, her most frequently performed Strauss role was that of Elektra. Remarkably, beyond the princess of Crete she also sang the opera’s other two female roles, Chrysothemis and Klytemnestra – a rarity in operatic history. She débuted as Chrysothemis at the Met in 1978, as Elektra in Vienna in 1989, and as Klytemnestra in Barcelona in 2008. Having for the most part embodied lyrical heroines, she accepted without hesitation the Vienna State Opera’s invitation to take on the unyielding dramatic challenge of Elektra’s role. In Harry Kupfer’s conception, Elektra was a “beast that inflicts wounds, fuelled by her hatred of her mother” – a portrayal that at first proved difficult for Marton until she grasped the essence of the character. “I recalled something I had once heard of a religious leader, driven into exile. He had only one photograph: of the man he passionately hated. Nothing else – only a bed, a chair, a table, and that picture, hung opposite the bed so that he could always see it, always remember how fiercely he hated. This feeling is alien to me. To hate consumes all one’s energy. It is a terrible loss! Elektra is sustained by hatred. And when the object of her hatred – her mother – dies, her life too becomes void, and she perishes”, she told András Batta. [17]

She was acclaimed as Elektra in Vienna, Salzburg, Stuttgart, Barcelona, New York, Chicago and Washington, her portrayal preserved on a superb recording conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch for EMI in Munich in 1990. Yet the pinnacle of her Elektra career came with the Covent Garden production in London, in which she shared the triumph with two towering figures: Sir Georg Solti, the great Hungarian conductor, and Götz Friedrich, the world-renowned director. On 3 March 1990 The Times published its review under the headline Double Hungarian Triumph!: “If the evening is essentially a Marton–Solti double Hungarian triumph, it is helped in the right direction by Götz Friedrich’s production. […] Of course, it helps that Marton moves so well, and seizes attention even when she is huddled on the floor at the opening. But it helps still more that she is in resoundingly good vocal form. There is no harshness here: this is a woman who is still young, still in a sense innocent singing indeed out of an outraged innocence, with a centred purity and accuracy, a stung and stinging beauty, even when she is foaming with torrents of abuse. No doubt the shell-stage helps, but her conversational detail and variety of tone show an intelligent command of vocal resources that is as remarkable as her sheer stamina.” [18] Between 1989 and 2007 she sang Elektra in seventy-four performances across twenty cities, her portrayal even earning a nomination for the Laurence Olivier Award in 1991.

She first appeared in the title role of Salome in 1987 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris in a concert performance that met with frenzied acclaim. Two years later, in 1989, came her staged première at the Met in Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s production. The director’s interpretation – that Salome was less a wicked woman than a “decadent and hysterical” victim – divided the critics, but all were agreed that Marton sang with such magnificence that the performance might as well have been staged on Mars. She bade farewell to the role in the 1991/92 season-opening production at Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu, directed by Jochen Ulrich and conducted by Antoni Ros-Marbà.

Her Ariadne auf Naxos début was in Geneva in 1980. This opera playfully combines two sharply contrasting genres – the tragic opera and the romantic farce – an exquisite delicacy for the connoisseur. Between 1980 and 1990 she performed the dual role of Ariadne/Prima Donna in several productions in Cologne, Hamburg, Milan’s La Scala and Bonn. She sang the title role of Die ägyptische Helena, Strauss’s most demanding part vocally, only twice, at the Bayerische Staatsoper during the 1981 Munich Festival.

Strauss’s songs, however, she performed continually on the concert platform. Alongside the Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs), which from the outset had been part of her repertoire, Marton also gave the world première of Malven, one of Strauss’s last compositions. This she performed in Toronto in 1985, recorded by CBS.

A year after her resounding triumph in Die Frau ohne Schatten, yet another true victory was achieved at the Metropolitan Opera’s 1982/83 season-opening performance, in one of the jewels of verismo. Marton breathed “living character” into Amilcare Ponchielli’s La Gioconda, “drawing the audience with passion into the whirlpool of this heavy drama”, wrote the critic Peter G. Davis. [19] Opera News was equally rapturous: “She was generous with her emotional and vocal treasures, and elevated Ponchielli’s street singer into the tragic realm of the lonely heroine. Her approach to the character-building was carefully planned, gradually built and climaxed in Act IV in the Suicidio aria. She amazed us with her grandness, rolling voice, and absolute identification with the role. Éva Marton, this tall, beautiful woman has a glorious voice that can express any hue and tackle any register dynamism.” [20] In May 1986, Vienna likewise received her with heightened fervour, hailing her as the heir to Maria Jeritza [1887–1982, legendary Czech-Austrian soprano of the Wiener Staatsoper] in La Gioconda – a portrayal counted among the greatest in operatic history.

Beyond Senta in Der fliegende Holländer, there was scarcely a major Wagner heroine that Marton did not embody. Indeed, it was through Wagner that her international career truly began. On 16 February 1969 the Hungarian State Opera staged Das Rheingold, in which Marton, as Freia, embodied eternal youth and beauty. In this role she was noticed by Peter Mario Katona, assistant to Christoph von Dohnányi, who drew the attention of his chief, the director of Frankfurt Opera, to the young soprano’s exceptional voice. Following a successful audition, she appeared in 1971 as the Countess in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at Dohnányi’s theatre. Once granted a travel permit, she began the 1972/73 season in Frankfurt. There her first Wagner role was Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The répétiteurs not only coached her musically and linguistically but also initiated the young foreign colleague into the nuances of German culture. It was, she recalled, a first-class school: “There was great discipline: we had to arrive fifteen minutes before rehearsal, fully prepared. Joint ensemble rehearsals were regular even before stage rehearsals – a practice now almost extinct in opera houses. We had rehearsal costumes and shoes, not everyday clothes – this gave the work a certain dignity, and we all carried it out in a good spirit. […] All that I had no chance to learn in Budapest, I mastered here. And meanwhile magnificent productions came into being.” [21]

With this thorough training she gave of her best when she first appeared at the Met, on 3 November 1976, as Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. “Perhaps the most exciting among the new-comers was Eva Marton, a Hungarian soprano with a big bright voice fully under control. She was the Eva and she could well be the heir of those roles previously the property locally of Birgit Nilsson…” reported The Operaphile [22]. In the same year she accepted Sieglinde in Die Walküre at the Opéra de Marseille, staged by Jacques Karpo. By the 1980s, the great Brünnhildes of Götterdämmerung and Siegfried were her battlefield within the Ring.

She made her début in Bayreuth Festival on 1 August 1977, astonishingly in two roles within a single performance of Tannhäuser: Venus and Elisabeth – a rarity even in Bayreuth’s history. Directed by Götz Friedrich, the double success was repeated the following summer, and a decade later at Houston Grand Opera. Of these, Elisabeth was to dominate her career. Among the legendary Wagner roles, she also sang both contrasting figures of Lohengrin: Elsa and Ortrud. She débuted as Elsa in Frankfurt in 1976 and, at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires in 1979, won the award for best début. Thereafter came a succession of productions: Chicago, Hamburg, Zurich, Avignon, and the Met, where in 1986 she sang Elsa for the last time before turning to the more complex character of Ortrud – one of her greatest theatrical triumphs. Of the Met’s performance on 2 October 1984, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote: “The greatest sensation of the evening was nonetheless Eva Marton’s Ortrud. The frenzied ovation after her blasphemous oath in Act II lasted some five minutes. This was the first time in Met history that a Wagner performance had to be interrupted. Eva Marton had originally resisted taking the role, saying, ‘I am the pure Elsa.’ But James Levine wanted an Ortrud who could, at the opera’s conclusion, negotiate its dangerous high notes with ease. This was the prelude to an unforgettable début. The reception after the performance, recalling Birgit Nilsson’s triumphal days, clearly indicated that the star position vacated by the sixty-five-year-old Swedish soprano had found a serious new claimant.” [23] This Wagner role, begun as a brief excursion, remained longest in her repertoire, until the 2004 Budapest revival at the Erkel Theatre in Budapest, in a “disappointingly modernised” production by Katharina Wagner, the composer’s great-granddaughter.

Her Wagner gallery was completed by Isolde and Kundry. She came late to Tristan und Isolde, singing it only twice, in May 2000 in Ruth Berghaus’s production at the Hamburgische Staatsoper. Kundry, like Parsifal himself, is a character who develops and changes. Marton felt a special intimacy with this woman, unable to forget the Redeemer’s gaze and condemned to lifelong penance: “Parsifal is the non plus ultra for me. […] It affected me profoundly and shaped me as a human being.” [24] She first sang Kundry in 1998 in Barcelona at the Palau de la Música Catalana (in a concert performance), and later in 2001 at the Teatro São Carlos in Lisbon. Kundry’s words – “nur dienen, dienen” (“only to serve, to serve”) – opened new horizons for Marton, this time within Hungarian musical life.

Her first masterclass was in 2003 at the Liszt Academy. From 2005 to 2013 she served there as head of department, devoting herself to the training of a new generation of singers. In 2014 she inaugurated the Éva Marton International Singing Competition, a biennial event, which within a few years became one of Europe’s most prestigious contests. “I returned to my homeland, to Hungary, because I felt I had to pass on what I knew. I have always thought of my career as a long journey of collecting and gathering. I have a great rucksack, which over the years I have filled with experiences, with knowledge, with skills, and all this I wish to distribute. My desire is that when the time comes to part with life, the rucksack will be empty. Today I know that devoted service is the true victory.” [25]

[2017]

[1] Première: 15 November 1968

[2] János Lózsy: Az aranykakas – Rimszkij-Korszakov operája az Erkel Színházban (lit. The Golden Cockerel – Rimsky-Korsakov’s Opera at the Erkel Theatre), Népszabadság, 10 December 1968, p. 7

[3] Mária Feuer: A jóságos zsarnok (lit. The Benevolent Tyrant), Élet és Irodalom, 9 May 1970

[4] András Batta: Marton Éva – A mennyei hang (lit. Éva Marton – A Voice from Heaven), Helikon Publishing, 2013, p. 73

[5] András Batta: Marton Éva – A mennyei hang (lit. Éva Marton – A Voice from Heaven), Helikon Publishing, 2013, pp. 78–79

[6] András Batta: Marton Éva – A mennyei hang (lit. Éva Marton – A Voice from Heaven), Helikon Publishing, 2013, p. 82

[7] Robert Kimball: ‘Turandot’ – Hail opulence!, New York Post, March 1987 [?]

[8] András Batta: Marton Éva – A mennyei hang (lit. Éva Marton – A Voice from Heaven), Helikon Publishing, 2013, pp. 158–159

[9] András Rajk: Nyári színházak 1972 – Attila – Verdi bemutató a Margitszigeten (lit. Summer Theatres 1972 – Attila – A Verdi Première on Margaret Island), Népszava, 12 July 1972

[10] András Batta: Marton Éva – A mennyei hang (lit. Éva Marton – A Voice from Heaven), Helikon Publishing, 2013, p. 166

[11] Manuel Valis, El País, 22 February 1983

[12] Manuel Valis, El País, 22 February 1983

[13] N. N.: Azért volt egy első az egyenlők között (lit. One Who Was First Among Equals), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 23 March 1976

[14] András Batta: Marton Éva – A mennyei hang (lit. Éva Marton – A Voice from Heaven), Helikon Publishing, 2013, pp. 174–175

[15] András Batta: Marton Éva – A mennyei hang (lit. Éva Marton – A Voice from Heaven), Helikon Publishing, 2013, p. 104

[16] András Batta: Marton Éva – A mennyei hang (lit. Éva Marton – A Voice from Heaven), Helikon Publishing, 2013, p. 107

[17] András Batta: Marton Éva – A mennyei hang (lit. Éva Marton – A Voice from Heaven), Helikon Publishing, 2013, p. 116

[18] András Batta: Marton Éva – A mennyei hang (lit. Éva Marton – A Voice from Heaven), Helikon Publishing, 2013, p. 180

[19] András Batta: Marton Éva – A mennyei hang (lit. Éva Marton – A Voice from Heaven), Helikon Publishing, 2013, p. 119

[20] Opera News, December 1982. In: Batta András: Marton Éva – A mennyei hang (lit. Éva Marton – A Voice from Heaven), Helikon Publishing, 2013, p. 119

[21] András Batta: Marton Éva – A mennyei hang (lit. Éva Marton – A Voice from Heaven), Helikon Publishing, 2013, p. 52

[22] Anthony Coggi, review in The Operaphile, November 1976. Available at: https://archives.metopera.org/MetOperaSearch/record.jsp?dockey=0376167

[23] Hans Heinsheimer: Wagner-Debüt an der Met, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 11 October 1984. In: Batta András: Marton Éva – A mennyei hang (lit. Éva Marton – The Heavenly Voice), Helikon Kiadó, 2013, p. 144

[24] András Batta: Marton Éva – A mennyei hang (lit. Éva Marton – A Voice from Heaven), Helikon Publishing, 2013, pp. 151–152

[25] András Batta: Marton Éva – A mennyei hang (lit. Éva Marton – A Voice from Heaven), Helikon Publishing, 2013, p. 215