Martha Lipton (April 6, 1913 – November 28, 2006) was an American operatic mezzo-soprano and music educator who is best known for her career performing at the Metropolitan Opera ("The Met") from 1944-1961.[1][2] A native of New York City, she began her training as a vocalist with her mother who had a brief career as a concert soprano under the name Estelle Laiken. She later studied both privately and at the School of Musicianship for Singers, Inc and the Juilliard School. She made her professional concert debut while still a student in 1933 at Carnegie Hall, performing in a concert of light opera excerpts with the New York Light Opera Guild. In 1936 she began working as a church vocalist at both Riverside Church and Temple Emanu-El of New York.
While studying in the graduate school of Juilliard from 1937-1939, Lipton began her opera career as a contract member of the resident opera company at Radio City Music Hall (RCMH), making her professional opera debut as Alisa in Lucia di Lammermoor on November 6, 1938 at the RCMH. In 1939 she created the role of Queen Isabella in the world premiere of Eugene Zador's opera Christopher Columbus with the RCMH Opera Company. That same year she won two singing competitions, one by the MacDowell Club of New York and the other a national competition by the National Federation of Music Clubs, which significantly raised her profile as a vocalist. Contracts for recitals and concert work with symphony orchestras on the national stage soon followed, including performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Portland Symphony Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra among others.
In 1941 Lipton performed the role of the Lady-in-Waiting in the United States premiere of Giuseppe Verdi's Macbeth at Broadway's 44th Street Theatre. In 1944 she performed in the New York City Opera's first season as Nancy in Friedrich von Flotow's Martha. That same year she made her debut at The Met as Siebel in Charles Gounod's Faust. She went on to sing in seventeen seasons at the Met, giving more than 400 performances with the company and portraying a total of 36 different characters. She notably appeared as Mrs. Sedley in the Met's first staging of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes in 1948, and performed the role of Mother Goose in the United States premiere of Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress in 1953. Her most frequently performed roles at the Met were Annina in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier and Emilia in Verdi's Otello. She mainly retired from performance after completing the 1960-1961 season at the Met.
On the international stage, Lipton made appearances as a guest artist in opera houses in Mexico, Brazil, Holland, and the United Kingdom. She also gave a concert tour of South America in 1946. She created roles in the world premieres of two operas by Douglas Moore: Augusta Tabor in The Ballad of Baby Doe (1956) and Aunt Maud in The Wings of the Dove (1961). She made multiple recording with Columbia Records during the 1950s and into 1960s, including records made with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra; the New York Philharmonic under conductors Leopold Stokowski, Bruno Walter, and Leonard Bernstein; and multiple complete opera recordings with the Metropolitan Opera.
Lipton was a voice teacher on the faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana from 1960 until her retirement in 1983. Having never married, she died in Bloomington in 2006 at the age of 93.