These circumstances led local people to raise some money so that she could go to Vienna and audition for Professor Gänsbacher, a prominent vocal teacher who did not teach women, but wrote important letters of recommendation.

Little Selma was thus enabled to visit the imposing Schloss Totis, the Viennese residence, en villéggiature, of the famous patron of the arts count Nicholas (Miklós) Esterházy de Galántha, who agreed to pay for her lessons with another prominent vocal pedagogue, Johannes Ress.

Once her career was established, Kurz consulted such world-renowned voice teachers as Jean de Reszke in Nice and Mathilde Marchesi in Paris, as well as the soprano Felicie Kaschowska, well known in Vienna; but she always called herself, above all, a pupil of Ress.

She appeared there and at Frankfurt am Main for the next four seasons, singing diverse roles including Eudoxie in Halévy's La Juive, Elisabeth in Wagner's Tannhäuser and Bizet's Carmen.

Gustav Mahler, music director of the Vienna Imperial and Royal Court Opera, heard Kurz in Frankfurt towards the end of 1898 and asked her to audition for him.

Mahler himself, hearing her perfect trill and wonderfully placed high notes in Leonora's Act IV aria in Il trovatore, suggested that she ought to study the Hochkoloratur repertory, in which she would become the Hofoper's prima donna assoluta.

The Court Opera director carefully introduced her to this repertoire by letting her sing Rosina (in The Barber of Seville), the pages Urbain in Les Huguenots and Oscar in Un ballo in maschera, Juliette and Martha; but she soon moved on to Elvira in Ernani, Lakmé, Konstanze, Gilda, Violetta (in La traviata) and, last but not least, Lucia di Lammermoor.

It was Kurz's legendary singing in Mahler's 1903 revival of Un ballo in maschera as well as in Goldmark's The Queen of Sheba, that cemented her immense popularity with the Viennese public.

In the year-long Mozart festival performances organized to celebrate the composer's 150th birthday, Kurz sang Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte in 1905 and Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail a year later.

She sang Tatiana (Eugene Onegin) and Sophie (Der Rosenkavalier) in 1911 and, in one of the many high points of her Viennese career, created Zerbinetta in the world première of the second version of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, on 4 October 1916.

Her last performance at the great theatre in the Ringstraße, where so many of her triumphs had been acclaimed by two generations of opera lovers from all over Europe and the world, took place on 12 February 1927.

Although already mortally ill, the Imperial and Royal Kammersängerin sang Mozart's Ridente la calma and the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria as a gesture to the baby's grandmother, Queen Marie of Rumania, who had long been a close personal friend.

Her London appearances were extremely successful, notwithstanding the enmity of the all-powerful Nellie Melba, as entrenched at Covent Garden as Kurz was in Vienna.

[1] Notwithstanding her always delicate health, Selma von Halban-Kurz had a notably happy family life in her palatial Vienna home until, in 1929, she became ill with cancer.

Her effortless mastering of difficult parts, the freedom of her taste of style, but above all her endless uncomparable trills can't be overestimated and she can still be admired on CD".