This renowned mezzo soprano undertook her formal music education at the Royal Northern College of Music and made her debut in 1977 as Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni with the Glyndebourne Touring Opera. Montague has appeared at the world's leading opera houses and concert halls, including Covent Garden, New York's Metropolitan Opera, the Paris Bastille, and the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. She is famous for her interpretations of the leading mezzo soprano roles in operas by such composers as Mozart, Gluck, Richard Strauss, Rossini, Bellini, and Berlioz that she has realized at the Bayreuth, Salzburg, and Edinburgh festivals, among others. Her repertoire includes such rarely performed works as Donizetti's Zoraide di Granata and Rosamonda d'Inghilterra and Meyerbeer's Il Crociato in Egitto (The Crusaders in Egypt).