6 Jul 2019

Montserrat Caballé (1933-2018)

From Appointment, 7:00 pm on 6 July 2019
Montserrat Caballé

Montserrat Caballé Photo: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

At the time that Montserrat Caballé won the 'Gramophone Lifetime Achievement Award' in 2007, Roger Flury and Des Wilson looked back at the colourful life and music of the Spanish soprano.

Her full name is Maria de Montserrat Viviana Concepción Caballé i Folch. 

“The color of the instrument is something you are born with. You can’t change that. It’s a matter of technique, which I learnt from my teachers when I was quite young and have been using all my career... Through breathing you make the line follow the composition. The feeling must come through the sound, and you can only produce the sound when you have a technique that is more than singing – more like gymnastics.”

“I form my impressions of a new work not according to what the libretto tells me, but according to what the music, the composer’s line, the whole sound tells me.”

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

“When the day comes when I can no longer sing, no one need feel the slightest sorrow on my account. I will be perfectly happy. My career has been exciting, and to stand there with the feeling that, through me, the audience has had contact with great music, has given me a sense of absolute fulfilment.”

On 6 October 2018, Montserrat Caballé passed away in Barcelona.