Just as most students need an enthusiastic teacher or mentor to really get them interested in a given subject, I’m convinced that a charismatic performer is the surefire channel to the love of a particular genre of music.

Montserrat Figueras was that channel to Early Music, for me. Not only did she have an incredible soprano voice — expressive, flexible, beguiling, strong — she wielded it with incredible skill and passion. it reached out and tapped me on the shoulder, caressed me on the cheek, then punched me in the gut, depending on what the music required.

Figueras died in Barcelona on Wednesday, after a year-long illness (it was this illness that caused husband Jordi Savall to cancel his Toronto concert at Koerner Hall last season). She was only 69.

For an excellent personal appreciation, to which I have nothing to add, check out NPR’s Anastasia Tsiulcas here.

Here is Figueras speaking in March, 2010, on the sort of open, inclusive cultural spirit she and Savall shared and propagated through their music, followed by a wonderful concert presented (without Figueras) at the palace of Versailles by Jordi Savall’s Le Concert des nations of music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (the lead soprano is daughter Arianna Savall) — with thanks to France’s cultural Mezzo TV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCfhn0IZ6L8&feature=related

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John Terauds

John Terauds, Editor-Emeritus of Ludwig van Toronto, is currently a Divinity student at the University of Toronto and a church music director. He joined the Toronto Star in 1988, was the classical music critic from 2005 to 2012, and continues as a freelance critic for the paper. He is the co-author of Roy Thomson Hall: A Portrait, a book written with Toronto Star Colleague, William Littler.

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