Tilly de Garmo was born Mathilde Klara Jonas on April 3, 1888, in Dresden to a Jewish merchant family. She received her musical training at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, which she attended from 1907 until 1910. She made her debut in 1911 at the Stadttheater in Lübeck and two years later moved to Hamburg. After marrying the baritone Harry de Garmo, she transferred to the Hoftheater in Wiesbaden in 1914 and from then on performed under the name Tilly de Garmo.
After engagements at theaters in Essen and Elberfeld, as well as a stage hiatus following the birth of her son, she continued her musical training in 1920 and 1921 with Curt Hoche in Wiesbaden. She was then engaged at the German Theater in Prague from 1923 to 1926. There, she sang the premiere of Seven Songs with Chamber Orchestra by Viktor Ullmann, the soprano solo in the premiere of Lyric Symphony by Alexander von Zemlinsky, and excerpts from Alban Berg’s Wozzeck. In 1924, she married conductor Fritz Zweig in Prague following the unexpected death of her first husband and moved with him to Berlin.
In 1926, the singer took an engagement at the Berlin State Opera. Her repertoire included Susanna and Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro, Gretchen in Der Wildschütz, Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier, Michaëla in Carmen, and Marie in Die verkaufte Braut. She also performed as a guest at the other two Berlin opera houses as well as in Dresden and Frankfurt.
As a Jew, Tilly de Garmo was dismissed on June 1, 1933, and left Germany together with her husband, who had also lost his position as music director at the State Opera. She initially worked in Paris as a concert singer and voice teacher before returning to the German Theater in Prague in 1935. In 1940, she and her husband managed to flee to the United States. There, she worked as a private voice teacher and in the 1950s taught at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, founded by German émigrés, including Lotte Lehmann and Otto Klemperer. Tilly de Garmo died on March 21, 1990, in Hollywood shortly before her 102nd birthday.
1888 Dresden
1990 Hollywood, California