The Viennese conductor Clemens Krauss helped the British sisters Ida and Louise Cook save Jewish musicians and scholars from the Nazis.

Night at the Opera

The little-known story of two British spinsters who saved dozens of Jewish musicians during World War II—and the Viennese star composer who helped them do it

By Isabel Vincent

I began researching Overture of Hope: Two Sisters’ Daring Plan That Saved Opera’s Jewish Stars from the Third Reich because I was fascinated with the audacious exploits of English sisters Ida and Louise Cook, opera fans who risked their lives to save Jewish musicians and scholars from the Nazis. (The Cooks mounted a private relief effort that spirited them out of Germany and Austria into England in the years before the beginning of the Second World War.)

During the 1920s and 1930s, in the spring seasons, these civil-service typists would spend their lunch hours queuing up for cheap seats and autographs outside Covent Garden’s Royal Opera House. It was there, on the eve of the London premiere of Richard Strauss’s Arabella, in 1934, that they met the Viennese conductor Clemens Krauss. (They’d asked for his autograph and photo; he’d obliged.)