Montserrat Caballé 

Montserrat Caballé and Freddie Mercury -The song "Barcelona"

Montserrat Caballé was born in Barcelona on the 12th April 1933 and is the most famous Spanish opera singer (soprano).

She studied singing in Barcelona and Milan and made her debut in 1956 in Basel as Mimi in Puccini's La Boheme.

From 1959 to 1962 she was engaged by the Bremen city theatre and gave her first performance in 1965 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as Margarethe in Gounod's Faust, which made her internationally famous. She is a frequent guest at festivals (among others, at Glyndebourne) and since 1971 has also been a regular at the Hamburg state opera house. She is also a highly prized concert singer.  The strong points of her long repertoire are particularly the operas of Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini, but also those by Verdi and Puccini.

The outstanding characteristics of her lyrical voice are its sensual beauty and an exceptional "piano".

She discovered and promoted the tenor, José Carreras.

She became known to rock music fans through the song "Barcelona" for the Barcelona Olympic Games of 1992, a piece from the album of the same name, which was recorded with Freddie Mercury in 1987. The album was the result of an initiative by Freddie Mercury, a fan of hers. At her request, Mercury wrote a piece about her home town, Barcelona, which was recorded for the first time on the 29th May 1987 in Ibiza.

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