Frank Eckart

Frank Eckart was in Antwerp (Belgium) when the Germans invaded Poland on September 1st, 1939. Being a Polish jew, Eckart decided to escape to the USA. He was on friendly terms with Mia van den Bosch, soprano of the Royal Flemish Opera House from 1936 until the end of World War II; she told Pierre Vandeweghe the following story:
"When in January 1959 I was walking on the Keyserlei (main street of Antwerp), I suddenly saw Frank in the crowd. After all those years he told me his story. He had been singing in the US and had made a tour of Germany singing at provincial opera houses, he was still singing with great success and had signed a contract with the Antwerp opera house. He gave me an aluminium-core lacquer disc and we never saw each other again. A few weeks later he had a fatal stroke after the end of the "Te Deum" scene in the first act of "Tosca". The Tosca of the evening Maria Dolores felt ill in the morning and was replaced by the Flemish soprano Marie-Louise Hendrickx. When Frank died, the director of the opera asked tenor Marcel Vercammen to replace Eckart, but Marie-Louise Hendrickx was in such an emotional state because of the death of her partner that she had to stop in the middle of the second act. The director came before the curtain and told the sudden death of Eckart to the audience. The public left the hall in silence."

After WWII, he sang regularly in Hamburg, but without much success; success followed when he was in Italy subsequently. In autumn 1957, he sang Don José at the Vienna Staatsoper, again without great success.