Martina Arroyo (born February 2, 1937) lived with her family on St. Nicholas Avenue and 111th Street in Harlem, New York, the younger of two children, her father was from Puerto Rico, and her mother from Charleston, South Carolina.
Arroyo, is an American operatic soprano who had a major international opera career from the 1960s through the 1980s. She was part of the first generation of black opera singers to achieve wide success, and is viewed as part of an instrumental group of performers who helped break down the barriers of racial prejudice in the opera world.
Here she is tearing up “Tacea la notte placida, Il Trovatore,” 1978.
Arroyo performed in great locations from Zurich Opera, Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Covent Garden, the Opéra National de Paris, the Teatro Colón, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Vienna State Opera, to the San Francisco Opera, and she was a Kennedy Center Honor winner.
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