I'm deeply sad to hear that the Catalan soprano Montserrat Figueras, the wife of the viol player Jordi Savall and the heart of so many extraordinary performances by his various ensembles, has passed away at the age of sixty-nine. Figueras's style of singing early music was at once steeped in historical sources and animated by freewheeling personal expression; she had a phenomenal ability to make ancient song come alive in the present. A French critic of a few generations ago might have called her "une voix du fond des âges." She was, of course, the lead singer of "Un sarao de la chacona," Savall's legendary reimagining of the chacona dance, which I heard live in 2005, on a Temple of Dendur program that also included a hypnotic rendition of Monteverdi's Lamento della Ninfa. A la vida bona!
