Later Mrs. Edward Joy, the wife of a local businessman, arranged to have Wittkowski attend music classes at the College of Fine Arts at Syracuse University and then study under the soprano Emma Cecilia Thursby in New York City.

At a recital organized by Thursby at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Wittkowski's performance so impressed Bessie Oakman, the daughter of former U. S. Senator Roscoe Conkling, that in 1906 she arranged to have the young singer travel abroad to be tutored by the famed Italian baritone, Antonio Cotogni.

Heink told her that her voice was one of the most promising she had ever heard, and suggested that she study Wagnerian operas at Bayreuth and participate in their annual festival to gain the training and experience not yet available in America; a path that at the time was beyond Wittkowski's means.

[8][9] As Marta Paula, she made her professional debut in the fall of 1908 in Italy playing rolls such as the Mother in Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda and Maffio Orsini in Gaetano Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia.

In 1922 the publication The Grand Opera Singers of To-day wrote:When Mr. Dippel produced " Die Walküre in Chicago in December 1911, a portion of one of the reviews read as follows: "Marta Wittkowski's splendid sonorous tones as Waltraute echoed from the mountain heights soaring superior to the sea of sound in the orchestra.