Montserrat Caballe: The legendary Spanish soprano remembered on her 89th birthday
msn.comMontserrat Caballe, one of the greats of 20th-century opera, is being remembered on what would have been her 89th birthday. Nicknamed “La Superba”, the Catalan singer began her career in Switzerland, Germany and Austria before becoming a superstar on the world stage.
She made her American debut in Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia at Carnegie Hall in New York City on 20 April 1965, replacing the pregnant Marilyn Horne and earning a 25-minute standing ovation. “When Caballe began her first aria, there was a perceptible change in the atmosphere,” critic John Gruen wrote of the performance in The New York Herald Tribune. “It seemed for a moment that everyone had stopped breathing. ”“The voice is quite hauntingly beautiful, with a darkly burnished tone almost like that of a viola,” added New York Times critic Raymond Ericson.
Her fame was assured. A Newsweek review of her performance that same year in another Donizetti opera, Roberto Devereux, noted: “Her fiery temperament so dominated the stage that the other able singers seemed made of papier-mache. ”Caballe was adored for her distinctive and precise bel canto style and interpretations of the works of Verdi, Rossini and Bellini.
She gave more than 3,800 dramatic performances in over 80 roles across five continents, over the course of an extraordinary career that also saw her pick up five Grammy nominations for her recording work.
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