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After settling in Paris, he gathered round him a set of friends, disciples and assorted ladies. From 1906 to 1912 he lived with Portuguese Cellist Guilhermina Suggia. In 1914 he married an American singer named Susan Metcalfe, with whom he lived for 14 years.
Nobody was a more unlikely virtuoso. Stubby, growing bald even in his 20s, he lacked the flowing hair, the spatulated long fingers, the panache of the classical virtuoso—in fact, with his owlish eyes and rimless gold spectacles, he looked like a bank clerk. But he prospered and did his best for his homeland. He founded an orchestra for Barcelona and supported it until it became self-sustaining. Then Francisco Franco's seizure of power changed Casals' life. He played or conducted numberless concerts for the Loyalist cause. Eventually he moved to Prades, a French village across the border from Catalonia, where he endured World War II, doing what he could for the Spanish refugees.
At war's end, Casals began a triumphant tour of England. But after six months, he discovered that none of the victorious allies were going to do much of anything about Franco. In sorrow and disillusion, he announced that he would make no more commercial appearances "as long as my country is not free." He later said: "I knew that in a world where cynicism widely held sway, my action would hardly affect the course of the nations—it was, after all, only the action of a single individual. But how else could I act? One has to live with oneself."
For three years, Casals endured his silence. Then Violinist Alexander Schneider urged him to play and/or conduct in Prades itself to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Bach's death. Thus the Prades Festivals were born. They became both a rite and a homage to the musician and the man.
Sacred Idea. In 1956 he moved to Puerto Rico, the native land of his last wife, Martita. She had come to him in France as a pupil, and they fell in love. When they were married, she was 20, he was 80. Casals was aware of the incongruity of their ages. "A bridegroom is not usually 30 years older than his father-in-law," he noted wryly. But Martita fussed over him and dealt with visitors to their modest house on the outskirts of Rio Piedras, and accompanied him every year to Marlboro, Vt., where he conducted and held master classes.
At home, he rose at dawn, trudged a few hundred yards down the beach holding an umbrella over his head to shield his sensitive eyes from sunlight, then came back and played a Bach prelude or fugue on the piano as a "benediction on the house."
When he died last week at the age of 96, the world mourned the loss of a great musician. It also mourned the loss of a man of magnificent simplicity and integrity. "I am a man first, an artist second," he once said. "As a man, my first obligation is to the welfare of my fellow men. My contribution to world peace may be small. But at least I will have given all I can to an idea I hold sacred."