Making her debut at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater singing from the libretto of “La Traviata,” chanteuse Charity Tillemann-Dick reached to the vocal…
Making her debut at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater singing from the libretto of “La Traviata,” chanteuse Charity Tillemann-Dick reached to the vocal stratosphere and gave her all to the last high note.
The audience erupted into applause and the soprano bowed, moved offstage and collapsed into a wheelchair.
An oxygen cannula was secured around her nose while caregivers uncovered the IV line in her arm and administered steroids and antibiotics to keep her alive.
“I knew that death was imminent, but I was able to live this dream,” Tillemann-Dick told The Post, speaking of her powerful September 2011 performance. “A million and one miracles had paved the path.”
Now 34, the singer — who ended up receiving two double lung transplants — has written her inspiring memoir: “ The Encore ” (Atria Books, out Tuesday), about her battle with pulmonary hypertension.
The terminal disease, caused by pressure in the arteries carrying blood to the heart, left her teetering between life and death.
But, acting against doctors’ orders, she became determined to sing at the most prestigious venues in the world: Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and Severance Hall in Cleveland.
In 2014, she released an album, “American Grace,” which reached No. 1 on the traditional classical charts on Billboard.
Tillemann-Dick, who lives in Washington, DC, and Denver, was diagnosed with PH at age 20 in 2004 while studying in Budapest, Hungary.
She had dismissed her frequent shortness of breath until she blacked out three times over a few months. After doctors identified the problem, she was placed on high doses of medication and learned she could never have children, due to bodily strain. In 2009, when her condition worsened, she was told her only option was a donor transplant.
One expert told her she should stop performing because she would be pushing herself too much — instructions she defied because of her passion for opera.
“Sixty-eight percent of PH patients die within a year of diagnosis.” said Tillemann-Dick. “I wasn’t going to give up my dream that easily.”
She had her first double lung transplant in September 2009. Then, after suffering a chronic rejection, she had a second transplant in January 2012. The prognosis after surgery is just five more years of life.
“I’ve managed eight years,” said Tillemann-Dick, who married her husband, Yoni, 34, in October 2011.
In a harrowing episode in the book, a few weeks prior to the second transplant, her mother, Annette, called the hospital staff because her daughter’s oxygen levels were plummeting.
“She [was] screaming: ‘If you don’t come right now, my daughter is going to die!’ recalled Tillemann-Dick, who, at 5-foot-8, weighed just 95 pounds at the time.
“It was impossible to get my respirator connected, so I was kept alive by a manual ‘bagging’ technique where air was pumped into my lungs for an hour,” Tillemann-Dick said.
Her Lincoln Center debut — for which she wore her wedding gown, because she didn’t have time to be fitted for a costume — was almost a religious experience.
“It was the greatest performance of my life up to that point,” she said. “Whatever happened in the future, I was profoundly grateful to have made it that far.”
As if she hadn’t been through enough, the singer contracted cancer of the salivary glands in 2015. “It was awful,” said Tillemann-Dick, who is now free of the disease. “I had chemotherapy and radiation, which was grueling.”
It’s not lost on her that her tale mirrors those of opera heroines.
“My experience has been so ridiculously operatic, if it was a work of fiction I would throw it away,” said Tillemann-Dick. “But real life is often way more dramatic than anything our imaginations can conjure.”
