She was notably a principal artist at the Vienna State Opera for over a decade and was a frequent performer at the Salzburg Festival.
[1] Born in Budapest, Réthy studied singing with Magda Rigó [Wikidata] in her native city and in Vienna.
Her other roles with the company included Agathe in Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz, Countess Almaviva in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, Alice Ford in Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff, Desdemona in Verdi's Otello, Eva in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Lauretta in Giacomo Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, Mařenka in Bedřich Smetana's The Bartered Bride, Micaela, Mimì in Puccini's La bohème, Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute, Violetta Valéry in Verdi's La traviata, and the title role in George Frideric Handel's Rodelinda among others.
[2] She became internationally famous through her many appearances at the Salzburg Festival where she sang Susanna in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro (1937–1939, 1941 with Ezio Pinza as Figaro), Sophie in Richard Strauss'a Der Rosenkavalier (1937–1939), Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni (1950), and Europa in the first public performance of Strauss’s Die Liebe der Danae (1952).
In 1940, she was supposed to appear in several roles at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, but the events of World War II made this impossible.