Grand diva of opera who formed unlikely partnership with Freddie Mercury

Montserrat Caballe, who has died aged 85, had long been acclaimed as the greatest operatic diva since Maria Callas, but she became a global superstar in the 1980s when she teamed up with the British rock star Freddie Mercury to record Barcelona, a homage to her home city that became the searing anthem of the 1992 Olympic Games.

It was an unlikely partnership, the svelte figure of Mercury and the majestic bulk of Caballe, sometimes known as ‘‘La Superba’’, but the song was a worldwide hit, demonstrating clearly the musical parallels between opera and rock and introducing her powerful voice to a generation previously unaware of her legendary status in the operatic firmament.

Mercury died from an Aidsrelated illness in November 1991, eight months before the Games. Yet the show went on, with Caballe appearing at the opening ceremony as their recording blasted through the stadium before going on to reach No 2 in the UK singles chart.

Caballe had become an overnight sensation in April 1965, a week after her 32nd birthday, when she took over from a pregnant Marilyn Horne in Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia at Carnegie Hall, New York. John Gruen in the New York Herald Tribune, wrote: ‘‘When Montserrat Caballe sang her first aria, Com’e bello, there was a perceptible change in atmosphere. It seemed for a moment that everyone had stopped breathing . . . What emanates from Caballe’s throat can best be described as total purity.’’

Caballe never aspired to be a great actress, indeed, her old-school ‘‘plastique’’ was the despair of many a stage director, but the voice made up for everything. In Tosca, where her character was supposed to leap to her death in anguish, Caballe simply gathered up her skirts and exited, stage right, with dignity. No one really cared. ‘‘With a voice like hers, the audience is more than willing to accept anything in the way of characterisation,’’ said one critic. Indeed, the essence of her appeal was a tone so sensuously warm, so beguiling, that it was just as entrancing at pianissimo as when unfurled at full voice.

As big as her voice was her reputation as a prima donna. She alarmed managers at Covent Garden by throwing an apple at the conductor during Il viaggio a Reims; she scandalised another theatre by using her curtain call to announce that a cut in Salome had been the conductor’s idea, not hers; and once she hurled a chair off the stage when it failed to take her weight during Tosca.

Yet, her life was a constant battle against ill health, with at least 10 major operations, two children delivered by caesarean section and any number of ailments. She suffered from a glandular condition that accounted for her immense proportions.

There was also her generosity. After Mercury’s death she often appeared wearing a red Aids ribbon; she created a foundation to support underprivileged children in Barcelona; she came to the support of the tenor Jose Carreras when he was stricken with leukaemia; and she served as a Unesco goodwill ambassador.

She was born Maria de Montserrat Viviana Concepcion Caballe i Folch in Barcelona, close to the Sagrada Familia, in 1933, the daughter of Carlos, an industrial chemist, and his wife, Ana, a couple with declining fortunes. She was named in honour of the Black Virgin of Montserrat, one of the patron saints of Catalonia.

Maria, as she was known in the family, was four when their home was bombed during the Spanish Civil War and they were forced to flee into the mountains. ‘‘There was no food, no money, no clothing, no warmth,’’ she recalled. She helped her parents’ finances by darning other people’s socks.

Music, nevertheless, played an important part in her childhood – one early birthday present was a record of arias that she would sing around the house. At eight she began to study at a music school attached to the Liceu that charged no fees.

Salvation came when she was 17. Thanks to a wealthy Barcelona family, the Bertrand i Mata, who were known for their philanthropy, she was able to undertake seven years of intensive vocal training at the Barcelona Conservatory with Eugenia Kemeny, a Hungarian former athlete, who gave the young soprano the foundation of her technique, including a magical ability to float soft, long-sustained high notes.

Her earliest stage appearances were modest, including the solo role in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at Valencia. She threw herself at the mercy of agents around Europe, but nerves meant she failed several auditions. ‘‘I cracked on high notes, at other times ran short of breath,’’ she recalled. One agent dismissed her, saying: ‘‘You’ll never make a singer . . . go home and find a husband.’’

Eventually Silvio Varviso, the Basel Opera conductor, offered her a year’s contract as an unpaid understudy. As singers fell ill she was able to step in and pick up a few francs, supplementing her income by serving coffee in a local cafe, while living La boheme-style in a freezing attic. Appropriately her first big success came in that opera when she took over for Irene Salemka as Mimi in 1956.

There were guest appearances elsewhere, but still her talent was largely unrecognised. Even her debut at La Scala, Milan, where one day she would triumph in Norma ,was as a lowly flower maiden in Parsifal.

In early 1964 she met Bernabe Marti, a tenor from Aragon, who was singing Pinkerton to her Cio-Cio San in Madama Butterfly on her home ground. In 1968 he told The Times how they got to know each other during rehearsals. ‘‘By the end of act one in the first performance it had turned to love. In fact, during the love duet I kissed her so passionately that she seemed very surprised.’’

After her dramatic New York debut of 1965 Caballe returned to the city at the end of the year to make her debut at the Metropolitan Opera with Sherrill Milnes, in Gounod’s Faust conducted by Georges Pretre. ‘‘Miss Caballe’s voice in all its pure loveliness projected beautifully in the auditorium,’’ gushed The New York Times. She appeared there on almost 100 occasions, bidding farewell in 1985 with Tosca alongside Luciano Pavarotti.

She shuttled between the great opera houses of the world for more than 20 years, though by the 1990s she was increasingly restricting herself to concert performances. To her small but close circle of friends Caballe was not the graciously regal diva the public knew, but a simple, warm-hearted person with an impish sense of fun. In her free time she enjoyed painting. Life for Caballe was all about music. Silence, she said, equated to death. ‘‘If I cannot sing, I have the impression I no longer exist,’’ she once said. ‘‘I mean it. I mean I am not physically there.’’

Life for Caballe was all about music. Silence, she said, equated to death.