Biography

His Carnegie Hall debut was in Il pirata, followed by Il trovatore, Rigoletto, Tosca, Werther, Turandot, Pagliacci, Carmen and Norma, in American cities such as San Antonio (Texas), Washington DC, Dallas, Houston and Kansas. He sang Gabriele Adorno in "Simon Boccanegra" in Philadelphia.

In 1972 he had to abandon a performance in Paris due to problems with his voice, which was subsequently identified as lung disease. He responded to treatment, but his career came to an end in 1985 after he was diagnosed with a cardiac condition.

On 14 August 1964 he married the soprano Montserrat Caballé at Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey. They had met earlier that year when on short notice he replaced an ailing tenor for performances of Madama Butterfly in Corunna. Martí and Caballé later sang together many times. They have a son named Bernabé and a daughter named Montserrat, also a singer.

Martí lived until the age of 22 in his town, where he worked in the fields and participated in the municipal band, until the parish priest of that town discovered the qualities of his voice and the sends to Zaragoza to study: "You are worth for the opera", he said to him, to which Martí answered: "What is it? ", recalled the tenor on the occasion of a tribute in 1989 in his city.

He studied singing in Zaragoza, the Madrid Royal Conservatory under José Luis Lloret, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, and the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena.