Charity Tillemann-Dick: Opera singer who drew life and music from transplanted lungs

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “The question,” she said, “was how to outsmart the tragedy.” Tillemann-Dick continued her operatic career – performing at venues including the Kennedy Centre in Washington and Lincoln Centre in New York, publishing a memoir titled The Encore and releasing her 2014 album American Grace – while undergoing two double lung transplants and enduring an aggressive form of skin cancer. “I wasn’t going to give it up.” For several years, Tillemann-Dick managed her illness by taking Flolan, a medication delivered intravenously by a pump that she kept on her person 24 hours a day. Even if my voice is silenced forever, I’ve just shared the greatest performance of my life in the greatest concert hall in the world.” open image in gallery Tillemann-Dick’s debut album, ‘American Grace’, reached number one on Billboard’s traditional classical charts In January 2012, she received a second transplant that allowed her several years of health and continued performance until her cancer diagnosis in 2015. “For me, singing with someone else’s lungs – it never lets me forget that I’m not the one who’s in charge, whether you call it fate or chance or God,” she told NPR in 2017.