Biografia

Despite her substantial reputation and impressive earning power in Berlin, at the start Holm earned barely 300 Marks a month at the Viennese Volksoper. She had, she later told an interviewer, moved to Vienna only for artistic reasons ("Das habe ich wirklich nur wegen der Kunst so gemacht").

Although it is the professional relationship with Karajan that is more widely celebrated, she was also able to advise him over a personal problem which arose when the maestro acquired a donkey which his wife found impossible to control.

She was a member of the ensemble of the Vienna State Opera for twenty-seven years, from 1964 till 1991. It was under the direction of "the doctor", Karl Böhm that she made her first State Opera, appearances but it was Herbert von Karajan who offered her the permanent contract, and under his direction that she enjoyed a stream of successes.

Since 2009 she has chaired the kuratotium of the Berlin based "Europäische Kulturwerkstatt".

She lived for most of the year in Vienna, and has for many years hosted cultural events at the 350 year old water mill at Altenmarkt im Thale (north of Vienna), which she acquired back in 1966.