Montserrat Caballé’s international career began in 1965, when she was asked at short notice to learn the title rôle in Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia, for a concert performance in Carnegie Hall, a feat that won the widest critical acclaim. Since then, she has sung in all the great opera houses and concert halls throughout the world, appearing with the most famous orchestras and under the baton of Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, Zubin Mehta, Claudio Abbado, James Levine, Seiji Ozawa, Sir Georg Solti, Sir Colin Davis, Riccardo Muti and Carlo Maria Giulini, among others. Montserrat Caballé’s repertoire is enormous, with stage rôles numbering nearly ninety, and she has made more than eighty recordings. Her leading rôles range from Luisa Miller to Salome, from Pamina to Isolde, but she remains best known for her bel canto rôles in Donizetti and Bellini, successor to Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland. She has also done much to explore less familiar repertoire, including Gluck’s Armide, Salieri’s Les Danaïdes, Pacini’s Saffo, Spontini’s La Vestale and Agnese di Hohenstaufen, Massenet’s Hérodiade, Cherubini’s Médée and Démophon, Rossini’s Ermione and Il viaggio a Reims, Donizetti’s Sancia di Castiglia and Respighi’s La Fiamma. Montserrat Caballé is the holder of numerous international honours and awards including the