Transcript of conversation with Martina Arroyo

Jo Reed: Do you remember the first time you sang at the Met?

Martina Arroyo: Oh yes.

Jo Reed: Tell me about it.

Martina Arroyo: I didn't get on stage because I was singing the voice from Heaven.  My mother missed the first performance because she went to the ladies' room so she didn't really hear me the first time <laughing> and I only tell that story because, I don't know, there was something so right about it, you know.  It would be my mother, it would be just when I was singing.  She came to every other performance after that as long as she was alive except when it was a performance she didn't like.  She didn't care for the Lohengrin and usually after the first or second -- after the second or third actually performance she would say her bursitis was bothering her in her left arm, I won't go tonight, but then when I got home I would say, "How's your bursitis?" and she'd touch her right arm and say, "Oh, it's much better."