Frederica von Stade has had a decades-long career singing on the world’s greatest opera stages. She has performed with every major conductor of her lifetime, she boasts more than 4 million views on a video of her singing an aria from the opera “Rusalka,” and she single-handedly discovered a composer, who recently had an opera produced at the Metropolitan Opera.

Not bad for a singer who couldn’t read music at the age of 20.