She had already been engaged for the 1965 season at Glyndebourne as both Countess Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro and the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, and then made her debut at the Metropolitan in New York, as Marguerite in Faust, another triumph. Here, as in all her future successes, her interpretation always expressed character, not merely bravura display. The limpid beauty and innate style of her singing as the Donizettian heroine won all hearts. She became an international star overnight. But it was in 1965, when she replaced an ailing Marilyn Horne in the title role of Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia, in a concert performance for the American Opera Society in New York, that her career really took wing. Her breakthrough Donna Elvira at the Vienna State Opera in 1960 was followed by Arabella back in Barcelona at the Liceo, where she was to appear for the following three decades in a wide variety of roles. When she moved to Bremen in 1959 she added Violetta (La Traviata), Tatyana (Yevgeny Onegin) and the title roles of Madama Butterfly and Rusalka, while taking smaller roles in larger houses, including La Scala, Milan, without making a particular mark. He was a great fan and called her voice ‘the best in the world’. She soon graduated to Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Fiordiligi (Così Fan Tutte), Pamina (The Magic Flute), the title roles of Aïda, Tosca, and Strauss’s Salome, Ariadne, Arabella and Chrysothemis (Elektra).įreddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé in 1987. To these teachers, to the unflagging support of her brother Carlos, and to her indomitable will she owed the longevity of her career.Īfter she went to the Basel opera in 1956, she started in small roles such as the First Lady (The Magic Flute) and worked as a waitress. Kemeny, who was at once an athlete and a singer, taught the young Montserrat the stringent breathing exercises that she practised throughout her career. She averred that she owed practically everything she achieved to two devoted teachers, Eugenia Kemeny and Conchita Badia, the latter herself a noted Spanish soprano. There she won the gold medal in 1954, although a fainting fit and consequent dispute among the judges prevented the award being presented until some years later. Her fortunes changed when a wealthy family paid for her to have seven years of training at the Liceo, the conservatoire that had given its name to the city’s opera house. She was the daughter of Carlos Caballé i Borrás, an industrial chemist, and his wife, Anna Folch: when she was four the family were bombed out of their home.
Behind that demeanour, she had reserves of strength and determination that came out of adversity in the Spanish civil war.
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