Among Victims of the Crash, Opera Singers and Newlyweds

Barcelona, Spain:

Outside the Liceu opera house in Barcelona on Wednesday, staff members gathered at noon for two minutes of silence to honor two singers who had recently performed there.

The singers - Oleg Bryjak, a bass baritone, and Maria Radner, a contralto, who had spent about a month and a half in Barcelona rehearsing and then performing Wagner's "Siegfried" - were among the 150 people believed to have died Tuesday when a Germanwings jet en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, Germany, crashed in the French Alps.

"When you are in an opera, it means working very hard and a lot together, so you become a mini-family," said Christina Scheppelmann, artistic and production director of the Liceu. "These were not only great singers but also wonderful colleagues."

As the two singers were mourned in Barcelona, details about other passengers, from at least 15 countries, began to emerge on Wednesday. The dead included a couple who had just married three days earlier, an Australian hoping to start teaching English in France, the wife of a prominent Catalan politician, and a mother and daughter from suburban Washington.

Thomas Winkelmann, the managing director of Germanwings, a Lufthansa subsidiary, confirmed that as of 11 a.m., the families of 123 victims - including 72 Germans and 35 Spaniards - had been notified. Citizens of Australia, Argentina, Iran, Venezuela, Britain, the Netherlands, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Denmark, Belgium and Israel were also on board.

Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, confirmed that three Americans had been killed and identified two of them as Yvonne Selke, 58, of Nokesville, Virginia, and her daughter, Emily Selke, 22. Psaki said the department was not identifying the third American.

In a family statement, Raymond Selke, Selke's husband, said: "Our entire family is deeply saddened by the losses of Yvonne and Emily Selke. Two wonderful, caring, amazing people who meant so much to so many."

Selke, who was taking a European vacation with her daughter, was an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, the technology consulting firm, in Washington for nearly 23 years. "Yvonne was a wonderful co-worker and a dedicated employee who spent her career with the firm supporting the mission of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency," which coordinates satellite-based mapping for the Pentagon, said a company statement.

The younger Selke was a lifetime member of the Girl Scouts, according to her LinkedIn page, and an alumna of Drexel University, majoring in the music industry and graduating in 2013. She worked at Carr Workplaces in Washington, which helps companies find office space. At school she was also a member of a sorority, Zeta Gamma Sig, that named her "member of the week" in May 2014 and said she was "a great friend, a caring member, and able to make us all smile."

Emily Selke graduated summa cum laude from Woodbridge High School, said Phil Kavits, a spokesman for the Prince William County public school district. "She was a very high achiever," he said.

Bryjak, 54, a native of Kazakhstan, had been a member of Deutsche Oper am Rhein, a German opera house, since the 1996-97 season.

"We have lost Oleg Bryjak, a great artist and a great man," the opera house's general director, Christoph Meyer, said in a statement. "We are stunned." The baritone sang at the prestigious Bayreuth Festival last year and was expected to perform there again in August.

Radner, a rising star of Wagnerian opera, made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in "Gotterdammerung" in January 2012, and at La Scala in Milan in "Die Frau Ohne Schatten" in March 2012. She had been expected to perform at Bayreuth this summer, according to her management company's website.

Radner, who was traveling with her husband and baby, was "one of the few contralto voices that we now have," Scheppelmann said.

The victims included a class of 16 German high school students returning from a study program near Barcelona, along with their two teachers.

Ariadna Falguera, the wife of a politician active in the Catalan campaign to secede from Spain, was also a passenger, according to Esquerra Republicana, a party leading the movement. Her husband, Lluis Junca, is a high-ranking member of the party. Falguera worked for a fashion company and was traveling to Germany for business.

A Spanish-Moroccan woman, Asmae Ouahhoud el-Allaoui, 23, was moving to Dusseldorf to live with her Moroccan husband, Mohamed Tehrioui, 24, whom she had married Saturday, according to Juan Jose; Maestre, a town hall official at La Llagosta, outside Barcelona.

Another person from La Llagosta, Francisco Javier Gonalons, 42, was on the flight, according to the town hall.

Carles Milla Misanas, the general manager of Mimasa, a Spanish supplier of equipment to the food industry, was among a handful of Spanish executives believed to have been flying to a trade show in Cologne.

Marina Bandres Lopez-Belio, a Spanish citizen living in Manchester, England, was killed in the crash, along with her 7-month-old son, Julian Pracz-Bandres, her husband, Pawel Pracz, said.

Another Briton on the plane, Paul Andrew Bramley, 28, of Hull, England, had just finished his first year at Cesar Ritz College in Lucerne, Switzerland, studying hospitality and hotel management, his family said in a statement. His mother, Carol Bramley, said, "He was the best son; he was my world."

Two Australians were aboard the flight. They were identified Wednesday by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop as Carol Friday, a 68-year-old registered nurse, and her son Greig Friday, 29, a mechanical engineer, both from the state of Victoria. Friday had hoped to soon start teaching English in France, and the two were spending a few weeks together in Europe beforehand, their family said in a statement.

Two Iranian sports journalists who traveled to Barcelona to cover Sunday's Clasico clash between the two giants of Spanish soccer, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid, were among the victims. One, Milad Hojjatoleslami, worked for the Tasnim News Agency, while the other, Hossein Javadi, was a reporter for Vatan-e Emruz, a daily newspaper, Tasnim reported on its website, saying their deaths had also been confirmed by Iran's foreign ministry.

In Tokyo, the foreign ministry identified the two Japanese passengers onboard as Satoshi Nagata, a man in his 60s, and Junichi Sato, a man in his 40s. Israeli news media identified the Israeli victim as Eyal Baum, 39.

Two Colombians were killed in the crash, that country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. Maria del Pilar Tejada, 33, was studying economics in Germany and was returning from a visit to see her husband in Barcelona, according to Colombian news reports. Luis Eduardo Medrano, 36, had worked in Equatorial Guinea as an architect since 2009, according to a statement from Fundacion Universitaria de Popayan, the Colombian university he attended.

At least one victim was from Belgium, the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Twitter, but it released no names. Mexico said as many as three of its citizens might have been aboard, but it cautioned that the information had not been confirmed.

Two Spanish employees of Delphi, an American automotive company, were killed in the crash, the company said. Rogelio Oficialdegui, 62, was human resources director in Spain and was set to retire soon. Manuel Rives Salinas, 51, was a labor union representative. Both men, who worked at Delphi's diesel systems factory in Sant Cugat, near Barcelona, were traveling to Delphi's German headquarters for a meeting, according to Marie-Pierre Ygrie;, a spokeswoman for Delphi.

Bayer, the German chemical company, said at least one of its employees, as well as the wife of another employee, were among the passengers. The company did not name them.

Winkelmann, of Germanwings, said there would be two special flights Thursday, one from Dusseldorf and another from Barcelona, to take relatives to the area where the crash occurred.

He and Carsten Spohr, the chief executive of Lufthansa, plan to fly to Dusseldorf and then on to Barcelona to speak with relatives of victims.

"The individual care for each relative left behind is our top priority," he said.