Montserrat Caballe, the Spanish soprano widely counted among the last of the old-time prima donnas for the transcendent purity of her voice, the sweeping breadth of her repertory and the delirious adulation of her fans, died Saturday in Barcelona. She was 85.
Her death was confirmed by Sant Pau Hospital in Barcelona, where she was admitted last month.
One of the foremost opera singers of the late 20th century, Ms. Caballe was an enduring, vibrant international presence, appearing at the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, La Scala and elsewhere, as well as at the opening ceremony of the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.
Spanish prima donna Montserrat Caballe welcomes the public on the occasion of the celebration of her 50th stage anniversary in Basel, Switzerland, in November, 2006. Ms. Caballe died on Saturday in Barcelona. She was 85.Georgios Kefalas/Keystone via AP
Ms. Caballe was, critics concurred, one of the sublime representatives of a type of diva most often associated with a bygone, golden era: smolderingly regal, seemingly inscrutable, a larger-than-life presence accorded godlike status by her reverential public.
“La Superba,” the world press called her, elevating her to membership in an international soprano triumvirate that also included “La Divina” (Maria Callas) and “La Stupenda” (Joan Sutherland).
Ms. Caballe’s exalted status was won by virtue of the vast number of roles at her command (more than 100, an almost unheard-of tally); the length of her performing life (she sang publicly until she was well into her sixties); and the lather of adoration into which her fans routinely whipped themselves.
Her recitals were often interrupted mid-song with wild cheering, foot-stomping and cries of “Brava!”
For sheer vocal glory, reviewers wrote, few voices, if any, could rival Ms. Caballe’s. She was possessed of a lyric soprano that, though light and shimmering, was not without heft. It was renowned for its riverine suppleness, and for an ethereal translucence that few other voices could equal.
“She possesses,” Stereo Review magazine said of Ms. Caballe in 1992, “one of the most beautiful voices ever to issue from a human throat.”
She was especially esteemed for her ability to spin out haunting, sustained pianissimos – the whisper-quiet passages that are among the most demanding tests of a singer’s mettle.
All of these qualities made her voice particularly well suited to the bel canto repertory, consisting of elegant, filigreed works by 19th-century Italians such as Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini. As a result of her prowess in that genre, Ms. Caballe was acknowledged to have helped spur a bel canto revival.
She was also adept in other genres, including German lieder and Spanish zarzuelas. Ms. Caballe even recorded an album with rock star Freddie Mercury, titled Barcelona and released in 1988.
Inevitably, as in any operatic career, there were critical cavils. Ms. Caballe’s devotion to tone over text, reviewers complained, could result in diction so slipshod that it bordered on anarchy. She was no actress, critics agreed, a consensus in which Ms. Caballe cheerfully concurred. And her ample frame, reviewers sometimes noted, cut an unpersuasive figure of the consumptive heroine – think of Mimi in Puccini’s La Bohème – that is grand opera’s stock-in-trade.
Because of ill health, Ms. Caballe also developed a reputation for pulling out of scheduled performances, a source of irritation to reviewers and disappointment to fans.
And yet ... there was the voice, for in the end, when it came to appraisals of Ms. Caballe, it was always the voice that carried the day.
That voice, Ms. Caballe often said, had been a gift from God – one on which she had built rigorous, hard-won training that her impoverished childhood had very nearly placed out of reach.
Named for Our Lady of Montserrat, the patron saint of Catalonia, Maria de Montserrat Viviana Concepcion Caballe i Folch was born in poverty in Barcelona on April 12, 1933.
Her parents, Carles Caballe i Borras and Anna Folch, loved music and, listening to their collection of opera records, young Montserrat was smitten. At 8, she learned Un Bel Di, Cio-Cio-San’s aria from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, by ear, singing it for her family.
She soon began studies at the Conservatori Superior de Musica del Liceu in Barcelona, first on the piano and then, as a teenager, in voice.
Her primary voice teacher, Eugenia Kemeny, made her pupils spend a full year doing vocal exercises and breath training before they could approach real music. That training, Ms. Caballe would later say, let her sustain her career as long as she did.
When Montserrat was about 16, her father fell ill and could not support the family, forcing her to withdraw from the conservatory. She worked for nearly a year in a handkerchief factory before attracting the sponsorship of wealthy Barcelona patrons. In gratitude, she returned annually to sing in Barcelona.
At 20, Ms. Caballe graduated from the conservatory with its gold medal for voice and embarked on auditions with Italian opera companies. Nervous and untried, she failed at all of them, inspiring one agent, she recalled, to suggest she forsake singing and find a husband.
Trying her luck in Switzerland, she caught on with the Basel Opera in 1956, singing small roles until she was called upon to sing Mimi in place of an ailing soprano. She spent the rest of the 1950s and early ‘60s singing throughout Europe.
Ms. Caballe remained relatively unknown in the United States until April 20, 1965. She had been engaged to fill in that night for an indisposed Marilyn Horne, singing Lucrezia Borgia in a concert production by the American Opera Society at Carnegie Hall. Ms. Caballe’s stellar performance established her international career.
Ms. Caballe leaves her husband, Spanish tenor Bernabe Marti; a son, Bernabe Jr.; and a daughter, Montserrat Marti, also an opera singer.