AARP Eye Center
The Takeaway: Opera-Singer-Turned-Film-Star Marta Eggerth Still Cabarets At 100
By Elizabeth Nolan Brown, April 13, 2012 08:39 AM
The bookers knew they had a promising idea, since Eggerth is a great storyteller and a stage animal, but they were slightly nervous about booking a 95-year-old woman. Would she, they asked her son Marjan before her first appearance, be able to perform for as long as 45 minutes? ... Forty-five minutes was too short. She gave them an hour and a half.
"People ask me, How is it to be 100?" she told the Post. "I say, I don't know. I have no standard of comparison. You must ask me when I am 200 what it was like to be 100, and then I will be able to tell you."
Eggerth was married to the Polish tenor Jan Kiepura, who died in 1966. The two starred together in a production of the operetta "The Merry Widow," which ran "in Chicago, in Europe, and on Broadway for a few hundred performances" in the 1940s. Here's Eggerth in concert in 1994, at age 82.
Friday Quick Hits:
- MIT's AgeLab is developing innovative technological solutions-robo-seal, anyone?-to help older adults monitor their health at home.
- How can you tell if your memory lapses are normal or a sign of trouble to come? Neuropsychologist Brad Folley said it's important to rule out things like a vitamin B12 deficiency, depression or medications.
- Reverse mortgages-once only popular with much-older homeowners-are being used by people nearing retirement to pay off debts, a new MetLife report shows.
- And more than 2.5 million U.S. grandparents are raising grandchildren, a number that experts say has been growing.
Photo: Andrew Lepley/Redferns/Getty Images