Galina Vishnevskaya

Galina Vishnevskaya was a famous Russian opera singer and public figure. She was born Galina Pavlovna Ivanova on October 25, 1926, in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), Russia. Abandoned by her parents during Stalin's dictatorship, young Galina was raised by her grandmother, only later to learn her father had been imprisoned. During WWII, she refused to evacuate from Leningrad which was besieged by the Nazis, who intended to starve the population and raze the city. (Some one million people died, mostly of starvation and disease, between 1941 and 1944.) She joined the resistance and, after two years of fighting, she was decorated for her courage defending her city from the Nazis. At age 18, she married naval officer Georgi Vishnevsky, but the marriage did not work, because he objected her opera career. After divorce, she kept the surname Vishnevskaya. In 1944, after the liberation of Leningrad, she joined a small operetta company led by Mark Rubin, who became her second husband. The couple had one son who died in 1945. Vishnevskaya and Rubin toured together for several years until she got the job at the Bolshoi Theatre Opera in Moscow. There, in 1955, she married the talented Mstislav Rostropovich and the couple had two daughters, Olga (b. 1956) and Elena (b. 1958). During the 1950s/60s, Russia was undergoing cultural changes and liberalization known as "The Thaw" initiated by Nikita Khrushchev. At that time, Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich made a significant input in the performing arts of the USSR. But the Thaw ended with the arrest of Khrushchev. In 1969, Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya saved their friend, dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from prosecution. At that time Solzhenitsyn needed a place to hide from the Soviet authorities. An arrangement was made for Solzhenitsyn to live secretly at Rostropovich's dacha, a summer cabin outside of Moscow. This angered the Soviet Communists, so Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya were banned from international tours and royalties. Their performances in the Soviet Union were also banned, their income was drastically reduced, and their musical activity was limited to teaching. The Soviet authorities put severe pressure on Rostropovich by restricting his communication with the world and by ignoring his numerous invitations to perform at international festivals and competitions. In 1974, after years of struggle with the Soviet dictatorship, Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya fled the Soviet Union with their two daughters. In exile, they were living the artistic freedom they had so longed for, and did not want to go back until the fall of the oppressive Soviet regime. In 1977, Rostropovich was appointed Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) in Washington, DC, the post he kept for the next seventeen years. Soon after Rostropovich became employed in the USA, he and Vishnevskaya moved from Paris to Washington and made their home there for the next eighteen years. Leonid Brezhnev retaliated by revoking their Soviet citizenship in 1978. During the 1970s and 1980s Rostropovich enjoyed a very active concert career; he toured extensively as a cellist as well as an internationally acclaimed orchestra conductor and pedagogue. He also made numerous recordings of cello music and became recognized as arguably the world's best cellist of his time. Being also a good pianist, Rostropovich accompanied Vishnevskaya on her numerous international concert tours. Besides her singing recitals, she directed a successful production of the Rimsky-Korsakov's opera "The Tzar's Bride" in Washington D.C. In 1984, she published a memoir titled "Galina: A Russian Story", which became an international bestseller. In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev restored their citizenship of Russia (then still part of the Soviet Union), allowing Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya to return back home. Their return happened during the most dramatic events of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. At that time Rostropovich joined the Russian President Yeltsin during the August coup of the hard-line communists against Mikhail Gorbachev. Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich established themselves as internationally recognized cultural, political and intellectual figures of the new Russia. Their film and music performances as well as their public statements were equally acclaimed and respected by all freedom-loving people. Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya divided their time between Moscow and St. Petersburg and remained active in the country's cultural and political life. In 2002, Vishnevskaya opened her own opera theatre in Moscow, the "Galina Vishnevskaya Opera Centre". In 2006, she was featured in Aleksandr Sokurov's documentary Elegy of Life: Rostropovich, Vishnevskaya (2006). In 2007, in another Sokurov's film, Alexandra (2007), Vishnevskaya starred as a grandmother coming to see her grandson in the Chechen War. Galina Vishnevskaya was made Grand-Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1982), Commander of the Legion of Honor of France (1983). She was designated People's artist of the USSR (1963). Her numerous awards and decorations include the Order of Lenin (1973), the Diamond Medal of the city of Paris (1977), the Order of the Fatherland of III and II degrees (1996, 2006) and the Order of Princess Olga of the Russian Orthodox Church. On numerous public occasions Vishnevskaya stated that the most valuable recognition in her life is the medal for Defense of Leningrad, which she earned when she was a teenager, in 1943, during the Siege of Leningrad in WWII. She lived and worked in Russia, sharing her time between her two homes, one in Moscow, and one in St. Petersburg. Galina Vishnevskaya died, aged 86, on December 11, 2012. She was interred in Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow, Russia.