Galina Vishnevskaya. Famous Russian-Women: Galina Vishnevskaya, Russia greatest soprano. Galina Vishnevskaya, Russian opera diva.
Great Russian women-singers
Russian singers and composers: |Alla Bayanova ||Nadezhda Obukhova || Anna Netrebko|| Pelageya|| Zemfira|| Lyudmila Zykina|| Alla Pugacheva|| Maiya Crystalinskaya|| Aida Vedishcheva|| Nadezhda Plevitskaya|| Aleksandra Pakhmutova||
Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya is internationally recognized as one of the world's great sopranos. She is a world-famous opera singer and recitalist. Galina Vishnevskaya was born on 25 October 1926.
As a leading diva of Bolshoi Theater, Vishnevskaya performed a great variety of roles in the Russian and world operatic repertoire. She has sung the great soprano roles in all of the major opera houses of the world: Metropolitan Opera in New York, La Scala opera house in Milan, Royal Opera House in London. She was a wife of the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and until his death in 2007; they performed together regularly (he on piano she on the podium).
In 2002, she opened her own opera theatre in Moscow, the "Galina Vishnevskaya Opera Centre. Vishnevskaya is the owner of numerous international awards and premiums: she is a Chevalier of France's Legion of Honor and was awarded the title of People's Artist of the USSR as well as the Order of Lenin, her country's highest award of recognition as an artist. She is also the author of the bestseller, Galina: A Russian Story. The book was staged as an opera in 1996, with music by Marcel Landowski.
Galina Vishnevskaya is also known for her charitable activities. She initiated Vishnevskaya-Rostropovich Foundation on behalf of children, and heads a new school for opera in Moscow, which is named after her. In 2006 Vishnevskaya initiated International Opera Singers Competition which will now be held in Moscow once in two years.
The life and career of Vishnevskaya and her famous husband was not smooth all the time. In 1978 Galina and Mstislav Rostropovich were stripped of their Soviet citizenship for the "systematic acts that bring harm to the prestige of the Soviet Union" mainly because of their friendship and patronizing Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The couple asked the Soviet government for an extended leave and left the Soviet Union and settled in the United States and Paris. She returned to Russian in 90th.
