Hilde Zadek was frightened as she stepped onto the stage. For one thing, Ms. Zadek, who died on Thursday at 101, was making her operatic debut: Though she had craved a singing career since she was a girl, working as a nurse and a shoe saleswoman to support her training, Ms. Zadek, at 29, had never performed on an opera stage. For another, she was singing the title role in “Aida,” a part she had learned for the first time only the week before. For a third, Ms. Zadek, a German-born soprano, knew no Italian, the language of Verdi’s opera. But there was an even more urgent reason that she was frightened on that February night in 1947: Ms. Zadek, a Jew who had fled Hitler’s Germany for Palestine, was about to step onto the stage of the Vienna State Opera.

Source: New York Times February 24, 2019 20:37 UTC