Ainhoa Arteta

Ainhoa Arteta
August 2013 at Quincena Musical (photo by Iñigo Ibáñez)
Born	Ainhoa Arteta Ibarrolaburu (1964-09-24) 24 September 1964 (age 52) Tolosa, Spain
Occupation	Opera singer (soprano)
Years active	1993 – present

Ainhoa Arteta Ibarrolaburu (born 24 September 1964 at Tolosa, Basque province of Gipuzkoa) is a Spanish classical and crossover soprano.

Her father, José Ramón Arteta, was founder and director of the Coral Eresoinka and she thus grew up in a musical environment. Aged 12, she entered the . The conductor of the orchestra there, Jacques Bodmer, former principal conductor of the Argentine National Symphony Orchestra, was a friend of her father and, having heard her sing, saw her take up study, after an exam, under Ettore Campogalliani in Italy, aged 18, before moving to New York with a grant from the Provincial Government of Gipuzkoa, to study at the Actors Studio. In 2003 she reworked her voice under Ruth Falcon.

She married baritone Dwayne Croft on 20 April 1998 with whom she had a daughter, Sarah. They divorced in 2003. She married showjumper Jesús Garmendia in secret on 1 July 2013 in Fuenterrabia. She gave birth to their son, Íker, in 2010. They separated in 2016.

Her operatic debut came in 1990 as Clorinda in Rossini's La Cenerentola with the Palm Beach Opera company in a production by the Tehrani producer Bijan Ahsefjah. She replaced the soprano who had cancelled a few days before the premiere and needed to learn the part quickly, since she had told the opera company in her enthusiasm that she knew the part, when in fact this was not the case. Her reviews were mixed: "Ainhoa Arteta and Maureen Taylor, as the wicked stepsisters, offered fairly bright, agile voices, but failed to project fully and missed opportunities to enliven their music", according to the Sun Sentinel. The following month, April, she was billed to appear in a production by Westchester Opera of Franco Leoni's L'Oracolo.

After winning the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 1993, she debuted at the Metropolitan Opera House in October 1994 as Mimì in La Bohème. Further Met performances include rôles as Violetta in La Traviata, the Coutness Olga Sukarev in Giordano's Fedora with Plácido Domingo and Mirella Freni, Micaela in Carmen, Musetta in Bohème and Thérèse/The Fortuneteller in Poulenc's Les mamelles de Tirésias conducted by Levine.