From the middle of the 1980s, Cortez, extremely conscious of the status of an artist of her calibre, started to abandon the prima donna roles in favour of more mature, real-life and age correspondent parts. She sang her last Eboli in 1982, her last Giulietta and Dalila in 1987, and her last Amneris in 1988. For someone who had been hailed "the most beautiful mezzo-soprano in the world" it required refinement and elegance to maintain that image. She then alternated her signature roles with the ones that would become the landmarks of her new repertoire: La Cieca in La Gioconda (Verona, Barcelona), Madame Flora in Menotti's Medium (Paris, Catania), Zia Principessa in Suor Angelica (Nice, Madrid, Bilbao, Lisbon), La Marquise de Berkenfield in La Fille du Regiment (Torino, Oviedo, Madrid, Monte-Carlo, Strasbourg), Anaide in Leoncavallo's Zaza (Palermo), Ulrica in Un Ballo in maschera (Barcelona, Genova), Madame de Croissy in "Les Dialogues des Carmelites" (Avignon, Vichy), Quickly in "Falstaff" (Bordeaux, Buenos Aires, Hamburg). Her acting abilities, as well as the richness of her voice, made her a sought after mezzo for composition roles (character roles), a trend she followed for the next decade of her career.
