After being diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension at 20, she endured two double transplants while pursuing her dream of an operatic career.
By Emily Langer Emily Langer Obituary writer Email Bio Follow April 24 at 6:18 PM For Charity Tillemann-Dick, the power of opera lay in its heroines — the consumptive courtesan who revels in the pleasures of life even as she is dying, the cloistered maiden who sacrifices herself for an ill-fated love. “They were these beautiful, strong women in impossible situations,” she told The Washington Post in 2013.
Compounding the tragedy of the diagnosis was the warning from a specialist that Ms. Tillemann-Dick must stop singing. “Those high notes are going to kill you,” she recalled the physician telling her. “She was absolutely emphatic: I was singing my own obituary.” As the disease progressed, Ms. Tillemann-Dick endured two grievous losses: the death of Lantos to cancer in 2008 and the death of her father weeks later from injuries suffered in a car accident. By the next year, it was clear that she would not survive without a lung transplant. In September 2009, physicians found a match — a surprise that, for the young singer, was not entirely welcome news.
By early 2011, her body had begun rejecting the transplanted organs. She went on with life as best as she could, marrying and, in September 2011, singing at Lincoln Center. In her memoir, published in 2017, she recalled the exhilaration of performing “Sempre libera,” from “La Traviata”: In January 2012, she received a second transplant that allowed her several years of health and continued performance until her cancer diagnosis in 2015. Transplant patients, because of the immunosuppressive drugs they must take, face increased risk of certain forms of cancers. Ms. Tillemann-Dick often expressed her gratitude to the donors who had extended her life and her ability to sing.
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