She has been described as "a singer blessed with elegant musicality, warm-hearted sincerity, and a voice of exceptional beauty".
[1] Elisabeth Schilz was born in Niederjeutz [now Yutz, near Diedenhofen (Thionville), Alsace-Lorraine] to German parents.
In 1918, her family was expelled from Lorraine, and they settled in Meiningen, where she studied theater and made her stage debut as Klärchen in Goethe's Egmont.
The family moved to Aachen, where they met Herbert von Karajan under whose encouragement she made her operatic debut in 1940, in the role of First Flowermaiden in a 1940 performance of Wagner's Parsifal.
She performed in the major opera houses in Europe and the United States, restricting herself to a small number of roles, primarily sung in German.