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Facebook, courtesy Charity Tillemann-Dick
Tilleman-Dick charity has performed on stages around the world
Charity "Sunshine" Tillemann-Dick, a venerable American opera singer who survived two double-lung transplants, has died at age 35.
Pulmonary hypertension was diagnosed on Tillemann-Dick in 2004, forcing him to undergo two emergency lung transplants needed to save his life.
Despite her illness, Tillemann-Dick has had a distinguished career, performing soprano work around the world.
His family announced his death on his Facebook page on Wednesday.
"This morning, the curtain of life is closed on one of his consummate heroines," the post said.
"Our beloved Charity has passed peacefully with her husband, mother and brothers and sisters by her side and a bright sun on her face."
A cause of death was not immediately clear.
Tillemann-Dick lived in Baltimore, Maryland, with her husband, Yonatan Doron.
It has been produced in the United States, Europe and Asia. Her roles at the opera include Titania in The Dream of a Summer Night, Gilda in Rigoletto and Violetta in La Traviata.
The singer has appeared in numerous theaters around the world, including the Lincoln Center Rose Theater in New York, the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and the Palace of the Arts in Budapest.
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Facebook, courtesy Charity Tillemann-Dick
Tillemann-Dick on vacation in Argentina with her husband
Youth
Tillmann-Dick grew up in Denver, Colorado, in a Mormon Jewish family alongside his 10 siblings.
Although she enjoyed singing from an early age, enjoying family trips to the opera and symphony, Tillemann-Dick initially thought that she could make a career in politics. .
She would follow in the footsteps of her grandfather, Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor who has been a Democrat in the House of Representatives for nearly 30 years, and an older brother, Tomicah Tillemann, speechwriter for Hillary Clinton. .
"It's kind of our family business, I suppose," Tillemann-Dick said about politics in an interview with BBC World Service in 2013.
But after graduating from college and spending time on a few political campaigns, she chose to return to music.
"I decided that I could never forgive myself if I did not try music," she told the BBC.
Tillemann-Dick started an intensive training program at the renowned Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, Hungary.
The diagnosis
At age 20, he was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary hypertension, a rare condition characterized by extreme pressure on the heart, with no apparent cause.
This disease had swelled Tillemann-Dick's heart three and a half times beyond its normal size.
The diagnosis provided an explanation for his recent fainting and shortness of breath, as well as a life expectancy of two to five years.
Tillemann-Dick had stated that one of her doctors had told her that she should stop singing for her condition.
In the hope of avoiding a lung transplant, Tillemann-Dick was seen prescribing Flolan, a liquid medicine administered directly to the heart through a tube in the chest.
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Facebook, courtesy Charity Tillemann-Dick
Tillemann-Dick lived with her husband in Baltimore
Tillemann-Dick told the BBC that the pump, along with the ice packs and ancillary equipment needed, weighed about 2 kg.
Not wanting to draw attention to her health status as she continued to audition and perform, Tillemann-Dick said she would tie her medications to her thigh.
"Sopranos are pretty unpredictable, without serious illness," she said.
In 2009, five years after the initial diagnosis, Tillemann-Dick received his first double-lung transplant at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.
Although the transplant saved her life, Tilleman-Dick said she was very concerned about the operation, especially the consequences on her voice.
"I had spent my whole life training my body, my lungs and my voice to work in sync and I knew I would lose it all," she told the BBC.
The brutal surgery plunged Tillemann-Dick into a coma for more than a month, unable to breathe on his own for nearly two months.
Eating, walking and talking came next before Tillemann-Dick finally tried to sing.
The first song she tried, she said, was Smile – made famous by Nat King Cole.
A career in the grip of disease
The average lung transplant lasts about five years, but Tillemann-Dick's body began rejecting the transplanted organs only a few months after the surgery.
While she was waiting for another donor match, the doctors told her family that it was unlikely that Tillemann-Dick would survive, according to the Washington Post.
But while she was waiting, Tillemann-Dick continued to sing.
In 2011, still without lungs, she made her debut at the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center. Tilleman-Dick had behind the scenes an oxygen tank and a wheelchair.
"I could barely breathe but I could still sing," she told the BBC. "It was a miracle."
In January 2012, she underwent her second double lung transplant of an American woman of Honduran origin.
Tillemann-Dick became a close friend of his donor's daughter, Esperanza Tufani.
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Facebook, courtesy of Tillemann-Dick Charity
Tillemann-Dick's first album, American Grace, reached the top spot in the classic classic Billboard chart on release
Second act
Tillemann-Dick did not seem to be discouraged by his illness and continued to pursue his career, singing with a new pair of lungs.
His debut album, American Grace, reached the top of Billboard's classic classics charts in 2014.
Tillemann-Dick's dedication to music was perhaps matched by his advocacy work.
She was a national spokesperson for the Pulmonary Hypertension Association, working to raise awareness, federal funding for research, and the promotion of preventive medicine.
Tillemann-Dick also shared his inspiring story with an American audience, including at many TED conferences.
"These are all miracles that opened this unexpected path," she told the BBC.
In 2015, Tillemann-Dick faced another health problem.
She was diagnosed with rare and aggressive skin cancer, possibly attributable to the anti-rejection drugs she had taken for her lungs.
The treatment required chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, including a special procedure that required cutting a nerve in his face, affecting muscle movement on the right side of the mouth, the Washington Post reported.
"Life is full of death, music, full of sorrow," wrote Tillemann-Dick in his 2017 book The Encore: a three-act memoir.
"Great artists have always magnified both."
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