Montserrat Figueras, the glamorous, powerfully emotive Catalan soprano who along with her husband, Jordi Savall, created ensembles that revitalized the performance of early music, died on Wednesday at her home in Bellaterra, Spain. She was 69.

The cause was cancer, said Alia Vox, the record label she and Mr. Savall founded in 1998.

In concerts all over the world and on dozens of definitive recordings, Ms. Figueras and Mr. Savall aimed at nothing less than bringing back to life a largely forgotten repertory. Along with other groups that emerged in the 1980s, like William Christie’s Arts Florissants, theirs were devoted to playing early music not just with authentic instruments and technique but also with authentic style and energy. Allan Kozinn wrote in The New York Times in 2006 that “the work Mr. Savall and his musicians do is not simply a matter of revival, but of imaginative reanimation.”

Ms. Figueras’s inimitable sound — keening and precise, passionate and dark-toned — was a key element in those reanimations. Though versatile and ceaselessly curious, Ms. Figueras may have been at her best in stately laments and lullabies; she sang heart-wrenching renditions of Monteverdi’s madrigal “Lamento della Ninfa” and the traditional Catalan Christmas Eve chant “El Cant de la Sibil-la.”