Her rapid rise to fame, beauty and personality earned her the nickname "The Moravian Thunderbolt".

The Emperor Franz Josef heard her and immediately ordered that she be offered a contract at the Imperial Hofoper, Vienna.

On 16 November 1926, she starred in the title role of Puccini's Turandot in its North American premiere at the Metropolitan, where she also created the title or leading soprano roles in Janáček's Jenůfa (1924), Wolf-Ferrari's I gioielli della Madonna (1925), Korngold's Violanta (1927), Richard Strauss's Die Ägyptische Helena (1928), and Suppé's Boccaccio (1931) and Donna Juanita (1932).

She appeared in an early sound film Grossfürstin Alexandra for which Franz Lehár wrote the song 'Du und ich sind für einander bestimmt'.

After a two-year marriage to a man named Friedrich Wiener, she married an Austrian, Leopold Salvator Freiherr Popper von Podhragy (1886-1986).