Montserrat Caballé [antikvár]

Preface This biography of Montserrat Caballé is long overdue, both in the sense of it being well past its original publication date and also in that it is the first full-length treatment in any language - including Spanish - to have been devoted to one ofthe most famous and best-loved performers of our time. Caballé's place in modern operatic history is assured, thanks not least to her recordings. But although she has been acclaimed across all five continents for nearly thirty years now, it is surprising how little is known of her family background and formative years before she was catapulted into the limelight in 1965. Since then, sopranos have come and gone, yet she is still actively with us, notwithstanding illnesses that have plagued her throughout her career. At one point in the 1980s this accumulation of ailments led to a nightmarish series of cancellations, which in turn led some to conclude that her singing days were numbered. Yet these episodes need to be viewed against some 3800 performances she has given in public in the thirty-eight years since her professional début in 1956. Even if she has cancelled nearly 200 performances over the years through indisposition, this constitutes only five per cent of her 'output'. If it is salutary to see Caballé's own career in perspective, it is positively sobering to view it in relation to those of two of her most eminent post-war colleagues who pursued, at least in part, a similar repertory: Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland. The Greek soprano's career effectively lasted from 1947 to 1965, an eighteen-year period during which, although indisputably the most famous opera singer in the world, she gave just 600 performances in total. Even in the years of peak activity - the early 1950s - Callas never once performed more than sixty times a year, and never sang a note of any non-operatic music in public. Sutherland's career extended from 1952 to 1990, a thirty-eight-year span in which she gave just over 1800 performances, venturing only very rarely into recital repertory. And beyond the similarities in all three sopranos' repertoires, there lay the differences, with Callas rarely