~The "Glass Shatterers!" series focuses on sopranos who sustain High F, or sing higher.

THE SONGBIRD: Erna Sack (1898 - 1972) was born in Berlin and studied music in Prague. She was signed by Bruno Walter to sing small roles at the Berlin State Opera in 1928 but it wasn't until 1930 that her stratospheric high notes helped her become a star soprano across Germany as Norina, Gilda, and Zerbinetta (Richard Strauss composed a new cadenza for her that seems to have been lost). In 1935 she made her first series of concert tours — to Austria, the Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom — and signed a recording contract with Telefunken. Sack appeared in German operetta films and continued to concertize internationally until she retired in 1957.

THE MUSIC: "Funiculi, Funicula" was composed in 1880 by Luigi Denza to lyrics by Peppino Turco. It was written to commemorate the opening of the first funicular railway on Mount Vesuvius. The sheet music was published by Ricordi and sold over a million copies within a year. Since its publication, it has been widely adapted and recorded. Richard Strauss heard the song while on a tour of Italy and, thinking that it was a traditional Neapolitan folk song, he incorporated it into his "Aus Italien" tone poem. Denza filed a lawsuit against him and won, and Strauss was forced to pay him a royalty fee. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov also mistook "Funiculi, Funicula" for a traditional folk song and used it in his 1907 work "Neapolitanskaya pesenka."