Background
VISHNEVSKAYA, Galina was born on October 25, 1926 in Leningrad.
VISHNEVSKAYA, Galina was born on October 25, 1926 in Leningrad.
Vishnevskaya went to school for 7 years after Leningrad blockade started.
She made her professional stage debut in 1944 singing operetta. She won a competition held by the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 1952.
The next year, she became a member of the Bolshoi Theatre.
On 9 May 1960, she made her first appearance in Sarajevo at the National Theatre, as Aida. In 1961, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Aida; the following year she made her debut at the Royal Opera House with the same role.
For her La Scala debut in 1964, she sang Liù in Turandot, opposite Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli.
In addition to the roles in the Russian operatic repertoire, Vishnevskaya also sang roles such as Violetta, Tosca, Cio-cio-san, Leonore, and Cherubino.
Benjamin Britten wrote the soprano role in his War Requiem (completed 1962) specially for her.
In 1982, the soprano bade farewell to the opera stage, in Paris, as Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. In 1987, she stage directed Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride in Washington, D.C.
In 2006, she was featured in Alexander Sokurov's documentary Elegy of a life: Rostropovich, Vishnevskaya. In 2007, she starred in his film Alexandra, playing the role of a grandmother coming to see her grandson in the Second Chechen War.
The diva made many recordings, including Eugene Onegin (1956 and 1970), Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death (1961 and 1976), Britten's War Requiem (with Sir Peter Pears and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, conducted by the composer; 1963), The Poet's Echo (1968), Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov (1970 and 1987), Puccini's Tosca (1976), Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades (with Regina Resnik, 1976), Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1978), Tchaikovsky's Iolanta (with Nicolai Gedda, 1984), and Prokofiev's War and Peace (1986).
Galina (autobiog.) 1985.
Vishnevskaya had extremely neutral attitude to politics and by all means tried not to be involved in it.