Johanna Emilia Agnes Gadski (15 June 1870/187222 February 1932) was a German dramatic soprano. She was blessed with a secure, powerful, ringing voice, fine musicianship and an excellent technique. These attributes enabled her to enjoy a highly successful career in New York City and London, performing heavy dramatic roles in the German and Italian repertoires. Biography Gadski was born in Anklam, Prussia, on 15 June 1872, according to most references, but birth records still extant at the Evangelical Church of Saint Mary, Anklam, Germany, state that Johanna Wilhelmine Agnes Emilie Gadski was born on June 15, in 1870. After receiving a musical education in Stettin, she made her operatic debut in Berlin in 1889 in the title role of Tchaikovsky's Undina. Gadski's studies in singing were principally with Mme. Schroeder-Chaloupha. When she was ten years old, she sang successfully in concert at Stettin. Her operatic début was made in Berlin, in 1889, in Weber's Der Freischütz. She then appeared in the opera houses of Bremen and Mayence. In 1894, Dr. Walter Damrosch organized his opera company in New York and engaged Mme. Gadski for leading rôles. In 1898, she became high dramatic soprano with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and the following year appeared at Covent Garden. She was constantly developing as a singer of Wagner rôles, notably Brünhilde and Isolde. Her repertoire included forty rôles in all, and the demand for her appearance at festivals here and abroad became more and more insistent. Gadski sang at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York until 1917, when the notoriety caused by the suspicious activities of her husband, Captain Hans Tauscher, American agent for large German weapon manufacturers, forced her to resign. Hans Tauscher attended an opera, met Gadski, and they married on November 20, 1892 in Berlin, Germany. They had a daughter, Charlotte Tauscher Busch, who was born in Berlin on August 31, 1893, married Ernest Busch, a German grand nephew of Adolphus Busch on June 12, 1923, (and died there on March 30, 1967). Highlights of her subsequent career in Germany included appearances in Wagner's works at the 1899 Bayreuth Festival and at the 1905/06 Munich Festival. However, it was in English-speaking countries that Gadski built her international reputation as a diva. She made her successful American debut in New York in 1895 with the Damrosch Opera Company and became popular, too, in England. In 1896, she created