In March 1945 allied bombing destroyed the Vienna State Opera. ‘The flames sucked air from the staircases and halls,’ recalls the model, muse and photographer Lee Miller. ‘The auditorium and stage are gutted.’

This striking photograph shows the opera singer Irmgard Seefried singing an aria from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly amidst the ruins. Taken in 1945, it forms part of Miller’s captivating coverage of the Second World War. As an official US war correspondent, Miller documented everything from life at the front and German concentration camps, to women’s wartime experiences and the liberation of Europe. Traumatised by the horrors of conflict, however, Miller gradually disappeared from public view.