Some time ago I came across this fax / letter.
it's a birthday wish to Freddie from Montserrat Caballe.
So far so good, but then I have a closer look on this letter.
The postal code has five numbers....
In Germany the five number postal code exsist since July - 1 - 1993 !
Once again a bad and bizarre fake, or is there a story behind that ?
To me the font style of the paper itself looks like it's not from the 1980/90s. The style looks very contemporary to me.
Also how common was it to include a fax number, but not a telex number, in the late 80s/early 90s? The only saving grace is that it doesn't have an email address at least.
I was thinking this could have been genuine, and Ms Caballe could quite easily have scribbled this on the hotel notepad on Freddie's birthday a couple of years after he died. Not impossible right? Doodling in a hotel room reminiscing about her friend. Easily done.
Well, perhaps, but having googled 'Montserrat Caballe Autograph', she doesn't normally put the accent over the e in Caballé, instead drawing a line that comes from above the E and underlining her full name. In this autograph it's clearly not like that, but it doesn't mean she'd never do it.
I guess without someone actually asking her if she wrote it then we'd never know. She probably wouldn't remember.
By the way if anyone thought that the Queen/Adam Lambert thing was a tragedy past its sell by date, why don't you google 'Montserrat Caballé Paris 2015' and see what comes up on youtube - yes, she gave a recital this year (helped by some younger singers) and it was frankly embarrassing. Terrible. It's sad because Caballe was certainly a tour de force in opera, one of the greats, and now she's clearly working hard to make up her income tax bill.....
It was rumoured that she'd packed up in about 1995, then it seems she was still giving recitals in 2005, and now it seems she's wheeled out for one in 2015. It's actually horrendous. There are other ways for a great opera singer to be in the public eye when the voice is gone - a scholarship in her name, coaching, masterclasses, a festival perhaps. But to come out and give a recital when there is no voice left (there really isn't), is very very sad.
Pianists are a bit different, they tend to go on forever and just slow down a bit on the repertoire (Horowitz in 1978 playing Rachmaninoff 3rd, with Zubin Mehta - wonderful - Horowitz knew Rachmaninoff and actually Zubin Mehta is a distant relative of Freddie's! Horowitz takes it a bit slower than normal but it's beautiful nonetheless). Singers on the other hand are governed by things that are less controllable as time passes than the hands are.
According to the comments on YouTube, a few spectators were moved to tears during her 2015 Paris performance. I'm not sure if that was because they sort of felt bad that her voice has gone, or if it was a sort of sad 'goodbye' moment. Probably both.
When she worked with Freddie she was already arguably slightly past her prime (although she was still brilliant), let alone now.
Did anybody catch wind of this, from May - link
"Madrid / Barcelona, ??May 12 (EFE) .- The soprano Montserrat Caballe, who has not appeared today in court that it should ratify its agreement with the prosecution, for which he accepted six months in jail for defrauding half a million euros, is "sick" and "in bed," he told Efe a spokesman for the family."