Friedelind spent Christmas 1949 with William Suida (1877–1959) and his family. He was an important Austrian art historian who specialized in the Italian Renaissance and was a nephew of Daniela's divorced husband, Henry Thode. After the annexation of Austria by the Nazis he had lost his professorship in Graz and had fled via England to the USA. Since 1947 he had been working as the head of art historical research at the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in New York.

When Friedelind saw Gian Carlo Menotti's opera The Consul in New York in spring 1950 it moved her deeply, since it gave expression to something she knew all too well – the oppressive, helpless feeling of someone whose life depends on inhumane bureaucrats. She had experienced something similar in London, waiting for her exit visa. The American soprano Patricia Neway sang at the world première in Philadelphia on 1 March 1950 and also in the New York run two weeks later. Friedelind had intended for Neway to sing Brangäne in her abortive tour of Tristan and she was a good choice, for Neway went on to enjoy a major career in the years thereafter, remaining in demand as a singer until the 1970s. After The Consul performance, Friedelind went to Neway's dressing room and was moved by how the singer had changed. ‘The success makes her look like the proverbial million dollars … it is finally the long-deserved recognition’.