INTRODUCTION

HER STORY

QUOTES

French music critic André Tubeuf said of her, "Caballé was the first and remains the only one whose voice has as its primary function, and charismatic power, being beautiful. She has devoted her art to the beauty of sound."

Leonardo Balada's Columbus opera, Cristóbal Colón, in which José Carreras took the title role and Caballé created Queen Isabella, had been written by the composer with Montserrat in mind.

She firmly believes that matters of true musicality, such as interpretive response, cannot be taught.

She is an honorary member of the New York Philharmonic, the first singer ever to receive such an accolade.

After performing Lucrezia Borgia in Carnegie Hall on 20 April 1965, Caballé had arrived in time-honoured New York style: the overnight sensation.  The reviews were uniformly enthusiastic.  The New York Times carried the following headline, "Callas + Tebaldi = Caballé."  Montserrat especially treasures a telephone call that she received from Marilyn Horne in which the American mezzo announced that she herself would never now consider singing the role of Lucrezia since Caballé had sung it to perfection.

The artwork on the cover of Presenting Montserrat Caballé, her first album for RCA, consisted simply of a black and white charcoal sketch of Montserrat subtly altered around the eyes and the mouth in order to make her look uncannily like Maria Callas.

In the earliest days of their friendship, Maria Callas had given her the following piece of advice, "The day you stop arousing controversy, Montserrat, pack your bags and go home. Until then let the cat fight the dogs."

When performing in Seoul in the mid-70s, Montserrat almost starved to death.  She was too afraid to eat having seen vans trundling around the city with dead dogs for sale.

She has always found the Côte d'Azur a highly congenial performing locale and estimates that she has spent well over 500 nights ensconced in the Hôtel Negresco in Nice in what is now called the Montserrat Caballé Suite, overlooking the Promenade des Anglais.

In 1973 her son Bernabé developed blood-poisoning and fell into a coma which lasted for three days. The doctors felt he had little chance of recovering. Fortunately, on the fourth day, the young boy slowly began to regain consciousness and recover from his life-threatening illness.  Montserrat ordered the building of a small votive chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary halfway up the hill on her farm at Ripoll, in gratitude for the recovery of her son.

The tally of Montserrat Caballés in her family is three: the diva herself, her own daughter, and her brother Carlos's second daughter. To avoid confusion, the soprano remained Montserrat, her niece became known as Montse, and her daughter as Montsita.

It was her portrayal of Bellini's Druid priestess Norma that set the seal on her worldwide fame.  It was the one role which she sang in all five of the great international opera houses-- the Palais Garnier, La Scala, the Metropolitan, the Vienna State Opera and Covent Garden, in that order.

When her career started to take off, Montserrat decided to engage in her first real diva's caprice: a glossy limousine. She arranged to purchase a silver Mercedes, still her preferred mode of transport. On numerous occasions, her husband has tried to persuade her to get rid of the ageing vehicle, but she will have none of it: even the suave and streamlined replacement which was acquired in 1993 sits more or less unused in the garage. It was her first car, and she is determined to keep it at all costs.

In the early 70s she received a pair of earrings through the post: they were from Callas, who had been given them to wear by Luchino Visconti on the occasion of her La Scala performances of Norma in 1955 and which she had worn in all subsequent assumptions of the role.  Callas died less than two years later, and this simple gesture perhaps marks an unspoken acknowledgement on her part that the torch had already been passed on to Caballé.

Every morning she does a breathing exercise of 45 minutes after having breakfast.  She sets up a stop-watch and measures how long it takes her to breathe out completely and usually manages one minute forty-five seconds.  Her ideal is two minutes, which she can do if in good form.

She vividly remembers waiting on the Ramblas in Barcelona for Renata Tebaldi to emerge from the Liceo's stage door in order to obtain her idol's autograph.

She has never made any secret of the fact that Strauss is her favorite composer and her one regret is that because she became famous for singing bel canto heroines, hardly anyone subsequently thought to offer her the chance of singing her favorite Strauss roles: Arabella, Chrysothemis, Marschallin, Ariadne and, above all, Salome.  Actually, Salome is something of an exception given that she has performed the role well over sixty times on stage.

In the early 60's she was diagnosed with anaemia. She was placed on a special diet which involved eating raw liver and what she remembers as hundreds of apples.  Not surprisingly, she cannot now face the thought of either.

Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly has always had a significance in her life.  It was the first opera she had ever seen and it contained the first aria she had memorized and sung.  She also met her tenor husband Bernabé Martí in a production of the opera in 1963 in northern Spain.

Her name, Montserrat, is the name of a famous monastery in Spain where the Holy Virgin appeared many centuries ago. Her parents, afraid of losing her before birth, made a vow: if the baby were born alive and well, she would have been christened with the convent's name.

She celebrated her sixtieth birthday with a Paris recital at the Palais Garnier to benefit the Worldwide Foundation for AIDS Research.

Her first time at Milan's La Scala was in 1960 in a minor role in Richard Wagner's Parsifal.