Monte was born in Rio de Janeiro, daughter of the engineer Carlos Saboia Monte and Sylvia Marques de Azevedo Monte. On her father's side, she is descended from the Saboias, one of the oldest Italian families in Brazil. She studied singing, piano, and drums as a child, and began studying opera singing at 14.After failing to break through into 1980s Brazilian pop rock she went into semi-exile in Italy, where she met the famous ...