Montserrat Caballé, 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 on Saturday in Barcelona. She was 85.
Her death was confirmed by Sant Pau Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, where she was admitted last month, and by the city’s Gran Teatre del Liceu.
One of the foremost opera singers of the second half of the 20th century, Ms. Caballé was an enduring, vibrant international presence, appearing at the Metropolitan Opera, with which she sang 98 times; Covent Garden; La Scala and elsewhere, as well as at the opening ceremony of the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.
She was also widely heard in recital, for many years making an annual appearance at Carnegie Hall.
Ms. Caballé 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. Caballé’s exalted status was won by virtue of the vast number of roles at her command (more than 100, an almost unheard-of tally, from fleet, silvery Mozart to weighty Richard Strauss and weightier Wagner); the length of her performing life (she sang publicly until she was well into her 60s, more than a decade after a singer’s usual retirement age); and the lather of adoration into which her fans routinely whipped themselves.
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