Given the recent sad news, there's been a slew of articles about Montserrat Caballé and most of them mention Freddie. I was reading this one from "El País" and I can't help but feel it isn't quite... accurate. Allow me to translate it and let's confirm and debunk its contents:
He appeared unannounced at the Ritz Hotel in Barcelona with his producer, Mike Moran, and high end gear and, before the piano, he sung “Exercises in Free Love”, performing the parts intended for her in falsetto. It was early 1987 and that’s how Freddie and Montserrat met. And that’s where the embryo was born, the iconography of both contemporaneous music and classic modernity that the Olympic 1992 Barcelona wanted to sell: the theatrical rocker and the sober diva singing the popular anthem “Barcelona”, the event’s musical paradigm.
Mercury was musically mad and obsessed with her ever since he saw her sing in 1983 at the Royal Opera House in London, performing Verdi’s “Un ballo in Maschera”. Through musical managers, the brit wouldn’t cease spreading the word on his interest in meeting her and sing together one day. In public, he kept on saying that his favourite performer was “Montsy”, in his particular words. That “Exercises in Free Love” (which would eventually become “Ensueño”) sealed the deal. Caballé liked that character who, contrary to impressions, sold his voice rather than his image. “When he improvised on the piano, I realised I was before a true musician”. It made such an impact that they agreed to meet again, in London, at Queen’s vocalist's home, to make a demo.
With lyrics and music by Mercury and Mike Habiten (sic, literal translation of "moran"), “Barcelona” came to existence. Probably not on accident: the soprano received the will and order of Barcelona’s mayor, Pasquall Maragall, to perform a piece at the opening ceremony of the Olympics, the anthem maybe. Maragall had already had Caballé partake at a Lausanne event for the city’s candidacy before the IOC, a few months before nomination. Over time, it was the singer’s brother, Carles, according to the soprano herself, who suggested the idea of singing together, both her and Queen’s leader.
That day in London, they stayed up until 6 AM to create the demo. Needless to say it seduced both the mayor and the Spanish Olympics Committee members. However, that musical miracle of excellence was human rather than technical. As Mercury later stated, they were indeed concerned about both voices and opposite registers “connecting with one another”, but it was no big deal given “the feeling that rose up”, according to her words years later. The hot-tempered but very human Caballé was charmed by the “humble persona” of a star such as Mercury, “nothing to do with how he was on stage with Queen”. She was also shaken (and this got them closer to each other) by the religious outlook, even though the singer followed the Zoroastrian cult: “I’m a believer and he talked about God and he said: ‘No matter his ways or his names, there is only one God’, and I agreed”, she recalled years later.
That chemistry between them was the only explanation behind the song that, charting 8th in the UK in 1987, went on to become an album, a work of art that took longer than a year and a half, sabotaged by the duo’s schedules and most importantly by Mercury’s AIDS sickness. “He told me. Then we had the chance to create songs, all of which have a meaning… I was touched because we were making something very special, which doesn’t happen often; you don’t always get to be lucky to sing with someone who’s departing, knowingly so, and perform with him his last goodbye”, as she remembered in an interview to the Efe agency a few years ago.
Caballé remained silent on his illness, something which made them even more intimate. It didn’t prevent them from performing together a number of times, particularly in a promotional performance (for 1992’s Spain) that took place at Ibiza’s Ku night club in May 1987. Mercury passed away 8 months before the Olympics opening ceremony, so despite the image in people’s minds, the duo’s performance was impossible. It was then that another song was sought after, and the organization opted for “Amigos para siempre”, sung by Josep Carreras.
But “Barcelona”, first track in the homonym album, remained: the clause established by Barcelona’s consistory demanding every worldwide broadcast to feature “Barcelona” helped it, for instance, chart 2nd in the UK in 1992. Art controversy notwithstanding (somehow, Caballé pioneered the popularization of opera singers involving themselves with the rock genre and the staging), the unimaginable yet delightfully shocking chemistry between “Montsy” and Freddie (“she’s a rocker now, thanks to me”, he joked) did the rest. So much, that the brit wanted this song to feature at his burial.
I always believed that their meeting was planned and, upon seeing/hearing Freddie, it was Montserrat herself who suggested they work together and do a song about her home city - and that they kind of dared each other into a full album.