Montserrat Caballe a soprano of sensational majesty

Montserrat Caballe has died aged 85. Photo / AP

Montserrat Caballe, who has died aged 85, was a Spanish soprano of enormous stature, both physical and vocal, who dominated the world's opera stages in the years after Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi; she later formed an endearing musical partnership with Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of the pop group Queen, culminating in their dramatic rendition of the song Barcelona in 1987, which five years later became the unofficial anthem of the city's Olympics.

A prima donna in every sense of the term, she sang with breathtaking majesty, and never more so than in difficult circumstances - for example, in replacing a pregnant Marilyn Horne to make a sensational New York debut in a concert performance of Lucrezia Borgia at Carnegie Hall in 1965 - but she could also be difficult, imperious and prone to cancellation.

That US debut prompted the front-page headline in the New York Times: "Callas+Tebaldi= Caballe".

Such a declaration could have led to a bitter rift, but Callas, quizzed in 1977 about who was her true successor, said simply: "Only Caballe."

Caballe reached the pinnacle of her career, she said, in a performance of Bellini's Norma in an open-air amphitheatre in Orange, near Avignon in the South of France, in July 1974. Critics, however, preferred her extraordinary rendition of the aria Vissi d'arte from Puccini's Tosca.

She had to rely on her talent rather than her tact, which could sometimes be lacking, particularly around conductors, who tended to treat her badly in return. When Silvio Varviso insisted on a cut in Salomé for which the critics held her responsible, she halted the applause at the next performance to announce that the cut had been the maestro's doing.

Extraordinary singer that she was, Caballe responded best to the unexpected. Long runs, routine and repetition bored her. If after a couple of nights of a season she felt there was no connection with the local audience, she would not hesitate to cancel the remainder of her run. Born in Barcelona on April 12, 1933, to a farming family, Caballe was brought up at the height of the Spanish Civil War. As a child she was happy but poor, surrounded by recordings of Miguel Fleta and with regular visits the nearby Gran Teatro de Liceu. But her father insisted on a "proper" career, so she trained as a nurse by day and as a singer by night.

She was invited to join Switzerland's Basel Opera in 1956.

Caballe's first British appearance was as the Marschallin in Glyndebourne Opera's Der Rosenkavalier of 1965.

Although Caballe was regarded in the 1970s and 1980s as something of an unreliable diva, this was not entirely of her own doing: she had operations on her knee in 1969, for cancer in 1974, for kidney disease in 1976 and 1982, and in 1983 she suffered a heart attack. She also had glandular disorder which meant that from being a slender teenager she ballooned to a statuesque figure.

As she approached her sixties Caballe's appeal began to extend beyond the opera stage. In 1985 Mercury declared on Spanish television that the diva was the person whom he most longed to meet; two years later she dedicated an encore at the end of a recital at Covent Garden to the flamboyant pop singer, who stood up and took a bow.

Home was always in Catalonia, where she was also an accomplished painter. She set up a foundation for impoverished children and served as a Unesco Goodwill Ambassador.

In 1964 Caballe married Bernabé Marti, a goatherd-turned-tenor she met the year before. They had a daughter, who is also an opera singer, and a son.