The meaningful death of a lung-transplant soprano, 36
mainThe heroic coloratura soprano Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dick died yesterday after a long struggle with idiopathic pulmonary hypertension. She was 36 years old.
Charity maintained her international career through a double-lung transplant, inspiring colleagues and audiences with her positive attitude. Her roles included Violetta and Gilda, and she performed with Zoltán Kocsis, Éva Marton, Condoleeza Rice, and many others.
She wrote a book, The Encore, about her experiences.
You might like to watch her brilliant TED talk.
I went to school with Charity and there are a lot of people grieving right now from her passing. With someone like her, you knew it was coming, but couldn’t imagine it actually happening. She was one of the kindest people I have ever met in this business. May she rest in peace.
So sad, a disease mainly of young people, especially women. Treatments have improved a lot over the last 20 years, but clearly not enough.
If there’s such a thing as “meaningful death”, what’s a non-meaningful death?