Lucrezia Borgia

That other Max — Beerbohm — once composed a mock-Shakespearean skit featuring Lucrezia Borgia, St. Francis of Assisi, Savanarola, Michelangelo and virtually everyone you can think of from the Italian Renaissance.

After a decade of performing in Europe and Mexico, Ms. Caballé made her U.S. debut on April 20, 1965, substituting for Marilyn Horne in a concert performance of Donizetti’s “Lucrezia Borgia.”

She had been engaged to fill in that night for an indisposed Marilyn Horne, singing Lucrezia Borgia in a concert production by the American Opera Society at Carnegie Hall.

On short notice, Caballe stood in for indisposed American soprano Marilyn Horne in a concert performance in Donizetti’s “Lucrezia Borgia” at New York’s Carnegie Hall and achieved a thunderous success.

She had stints with the Basel Opera and Bremen Opera before her international breakthrough in 1965 in Lucrezia Borgia at Carnegie Hall in New York.