Galina Vishnevskaya died

Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya was born in 1926 - in the first half of the last century. She was raised by her grandmother, they lived in Kronstadt, where during the blockade she lost her only relative. In 1952, she was accepted into the Bolshoi Theater, despite the fact that she did not have a conservatory education at that time, but she had a strong and naturally trained voice. Tatyana Larina, Queen of Spades, Aida, Madama Butterfly - whose parts she has never performed.

Vishnevskaya got the surname from her first husband, a naval sailor; she married the composer Rostropovich 4 days after they met. Music and poetry were dedicated to the singer. Akhmatova’s poem of 1961 (“A woman’s voice rushes like the wind, It seems black, wet, at night, And whatever it touches on the fly - Everything becomes different at once”) is dedicated specifically to her.

In the late 60s, Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich spoke out in defense of the disgraced Solzhenitsyn and lost the loyalty of the Soviet authorities. In ’74 they went on a business trip and did not return - they lived and worked in Paris, America - until the very nineties.

In Russia, Galina Vishnevskaya opened an Opera Singing Center named after herself, re-published her biography “Galina. Life Story” on her 85th birthday, and also very much criticized the modern Bolshoi Theater . She would have turned 87 next October.