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    Roberto Benzi  ROBERTO BENZI, conductor

    MONTSERRAT MARTI MONTSERRAT MARTI, soprano

     
    MICHEL BEROFF  MICHEL BÉROFF, piano

    FILOMENA MORETTI  FILOMENA MORETTI, guitar

    OLIVIER CHARLIER  OLIVIER CHARLIER, violin  GRZEGORZ NOWAK  GRZEGORZ NOWAK, conductor  
    THIERRY ESCAICH  THIERRY ESCAICH, composer & organist MICHEL PLASSON  MICHEL PLASSON, conductor
    WHILHELMENIA FERNANDEZ WHILHELMENIA FERNANDEZ, soprano GEORGES PLUDERMACHER  GEORGES PLUDERMACHER, piano  
    ANNE GASTINEL  ANNE GASTINEL, cello MARCELA ROGGERI  MARCELA ROGGERI, piano we are proud to have represented
     Bruno Leonardo Gelber  BRUNO LEONARDO GELBER, piano YUTAKA SADO  YUTAKA SADO, conductor  BRIGITTE ENGERER  BRIGITTE ENGERER✝, piano
    MATT HAIMOVITZ  MATT HAIMOVITZ, cello Marcela Roggeri - Florent Heau  MARCELA ROGGERI & FLORENT HEAU NAUM STARKMANNNAUM STARKMANN ✝, piano

     Florent Heau  FLORENT HEAU, clarinet

    Isabelle and Florence Lafitte - photo©Laurent Vicenzotti  ISABELLE & FLORENCE LAFITTE  MONTSERRAT CABALLE  MONTSERRAT CABALLÉ, soprano
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  • Conductors

    Roberto Benzi  ROBERTO BENZI
    Grzegorz Nowak  GRZEGORZ NOWAK
    Michel Plasson  MICHEL PLASSON
    Yutaka Sado  YUTAKA SADO
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  • Instrumentalists

     Olivier Charlier  OLIVIER CHARLIER, violin Thierry Escaich  THIERRY ESCAICH, composer & orgue  
    Anne Gastinel  ANNE GASTINEL, cello Michel Beroff  MICHEL BÉEROFF, piano  
    Matt Haimovitz  MATT HAIMOVITZ, cello Bruno Leonardo Gelber   BRUNO LEONARDO GELBER, piano  
    Filomena Moretti  FILOMENA MORETTI, guitar Georges Pludermacher  GEORGES PLUDERMACHER, piano  
    Florent Heau  FLORENT HEAU, clarinet  Marcela Roggeri  MARCELA ROGGERI, piano  
         
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  • Singers
     
    WHILHELMENIA FERNANDEZ  WHILHELMENIA FERNANDEZ, soprano
    MONTSERRAT MARTI  MONTSERRAT MARTI, soprano
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  • Chamber Music / Orchestras
     Marcela Roggeri - Florent Heau  MARCELA ROGGERI & FLORENT HEAU
    Isabelle and Florence Lafitte - photo©Laurent Vicenzotti  ISABELLE & FLORENCE LAFITTE
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  • Valmalete's Family Album

Montserrat Caballé, soprano

Montserrat CaballéHer international breakthrough came in 1965. She was asked at short notice to learn the title role in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia which was to be given a concert performance in Carnegie Hall. She was utterly unknown, but after her first aria the astounded New York audience gave her an ovation that lasted twenty minutes. As the New York Herald Tribune reported the following day: No amount of advance publicity could have foretold the extraordinary impact that this stately Goya-esque woman would have on an audience already spoiled by the likes of Callas and Sutherland. When Caballé began her first aria, there was a perceptible change in the atmosphere. It seemed for a moment that everyone had stopped breathing. Representatives of the major operatic and recording companies were in the audience that evening, and overnight her international career was launched. Since then, she has sung in all the great opera houses and concert halls throughout the world and is held in special affection in Paris, Vienna, Moscow, New York, and London. Montserrat Caballé's repertoire is enormous -her stage roles number nearly 90- and is probably unrivalled by any other singer this century. She can also lay fair claim to being one of the most commercially recorded, with over 80 titles to her credit, half of which are of complete operas. She has sung all the great roles of the standard repertory, from Luisa Miller to Salome, from Pamina to Isolde. But she is perhaps best known -and most admired for- her bel canto assumptions: the great queens of Donizetti's tragedies found in her an ideal interpreter, capable of investing, what in most hands can sound diffuse and generic music with a depth of emotional and dramatic power way beyond the range of mere coloraturas. Small wonder, then, that she became the only meaningful successor to Maria Callas in the role of Norma, an opera in which she dominated the world's stages throughout the 1970's. Additionally, she has also shown a remarkable enthusiasm for tackling forgotten works. In this, she has of course continued the examples set by Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland, but has in fact gone considerably further than either. Over the last ten years, at a stage of the career when most sopranos content themselves with a progressive reduction in their activities, preserving only a handful of manageable roles, Montserrat has instead embarked upon an astonishing exploration of unfamiliar repertory. This includes Gluck’s Armide, Salieri’s Les Danaïdes, Paccini’s -Saffo, Spontini's La Vestale and Agnese di Hohenstaufen, Massenet’s Herodiade, Cherubini's Medea and Démophon, Rossini's Ermione and Il Viaggio a Reims, Donizetti’s Sancia di Castiglia and Respighi’s La Fiamma. Additionally she has become known to a different and even wider audience through her collaboration with the late Freddie Mercury on the album Barcelona, a state of affairs which seems set fair to be extended as a result of a new collaboration with Vangelis. Montserrat is the holder of numerous international honours and awards including the Order of Doña Isabel la Católica, the Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. From 1974 she is Honorary Ambassadorship to the United Nations and from 1991 Peace Ambassador. Since 1994 she is Goodwill Ambassador to the Unesco. Recently she has been awarded as Doctor Honoris Causa by the Universidad Politécnica of Valencia. Her greatness as an artist has primarily been founded on her vocal qualities : one of the most beautiful and versatile voices in recorded history allied to a virtually flawless technique. But there is also the charismatic power and warmth of her personality, which reaches out and captivates audiences the world over. In an age when the term has been debased by indiscriminated use, Caballé remains the authentic embodiment of what is to be a DIVA.

CONTACT US
email info@valmalete.ch
phone +41 91 605 65 06
Management for Switzerland and sundry territories

MORE ABOUT MONTSERRAT CABALLÉ
Biography in French

LINKS
Bureau de Concerts de Valmalete
International Singing Competition
& Master Classes Montserrat Caballé

Valmalete Swiss . Via alla Chiesa 3 . CH-6934 Bioggio/Lugano . Switzerland | Phone: +41 91 605 65 06 | eMail: info@valmalete.ch | www.valmalete.ch