"You know the Phoenix?  It's me."

"People talk about Callas's Norma, Caballé's Mimí, but what is important is Bellini's Norma and Puccini's Mimí."

"When I sing opera my voice is an instrument in the hands of the composer."

"I am only an interpreter, a tool in the realization of a masterpiece, and I have to be inspired by the music if I am to serve it well."

"Whenever I prepare a new role the first thing I do is take the score and read it as if it were a book. Then the music is immediately inside me."

"Before even beginning to sing, to receive an ovation like I get these days makes me tremble all over."

"I really didn't care if I got bad reports at school generally, but if I got a bad report for music it was awful; that was something I could never accept."

"You can sing without proper technique, you can even sing without a voice, but you can't sing without teeth!"

"I have sung many things with Luciano, and even more with José. But with Plácido I sang everything."

"When I am angry I am not a person who loses my temperament for everyone to see. Instead, I keep it bottled up inside me and somehow manage to channel it into my performance."

"You break the unwritten rules, you don't do something as it has always been done, and a conductor who cannot follow a musical personality at this level will automatically say that this person is unmusical and difficult."

"I am named after the Virgen de Montserrat. I am Maria."

"I never thought I would marry. I had always worked. I felt like an old woman inside. I was used to the idea that this was how it would always be. And then, when I met Bernabé, my life changed. Suddenly I knew who I was and what I wanted."

"I am not now nor have I ever been a diva... I am only Montserrat!"

"I have always made impresarios a lot of money across my career and have never, so far as I am aware, given any of them heart attacks."

"Drama if I sing, drama if I don't sing. What do you do?"

"When a singer truly feels and experiences what the music is all about, the words will automatically ring true."

"The moment you say, 'Please, give me a reason for this', then you are being impossible and temperamental."

 

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