Montserrat Caballé

For something like four decades, from the 1960s to around 2000, Montserrat Caballé was one of the most thrilling voices on the world opera stage—a larger-than-life presence, with an unpredictable sense of humour and a tendency to go off script in performance that didn’t always endear her to fellow artists but sent audiences wild with delight. And she got away with it because she was one of the greats: her technique impeccable, her phrasing seamless and her sound a rare combination of power and beauty. Born in 1933 in Barcelona, she paid her dues as a young singer at the Basel and Bremen Operas before sudden stardom in 1965—standing in for Marilyn Horne in Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia (1833) at Carnegie Hall. It proved one of those legendary nights where the audience applauds, on its feet, for half an hour. And thereafter she became a mainstay of the New York Met, joining glittering casts in what now appears a golden age of singing through the 1960s, '70s and '80s. Encompassing a huge soprano repertory from lighter Italian to heavier German, she was at her best in Verdi, Donizetti and Bellini—providing serious competition for Joan Sutherland in the process. As Bellini’s Norma, as Elisabetta in Verdi’s Don Carlo (1867) or Leonora in Il Trovatore (1853), she excelled. But she also brought charm and authenticity to Spanish works, especially in recital. And she won whole new audiences as Freddie Mercury’s duetting partner for the theme tune to the 1992 Olympics, "Barcelona". Millions who had never thought of listening to opera became Montserrat Caballé fans—and wept over her death in 2018.