25 1926 October, the
В Leningrad, born into a working class family Galina Vishnevskaya — actress, director, and public figure. One of the first Soviet opera singers to achieve international recognition.
Her father was repressed as an "enemy of the people" (he shot at mutinous Kronstadt sailors after the revolution). Her mother left with her lover. She was raised by her grandmother in Kronstadt.
My grandmother affectionately called me "the orphan." I was constantly reminded of drunkenness and the streets. That's why I tried so hard not to repeat that unpleasant experience.
At school, she was nicknamed "Galka the Artist" for her artistic talent. She spent World War II in Estonia, visiting her father.
It wasn't a retreat, but a panicked flight. We stopped and came to our senses in Torzhok. That's how the war began for me. That's how my childhood ended.
She survived the siege of Leningrad. At 16, she served in the air defense forces, performing on ships and in dugouts. After the war, she sang with the Leningrad Philharmonic.
At 24, she became a leading soloist at the Bolshoi Theatre. At 28, she began touring abroad. She shone on the world's greatest stages—Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, the Grand Opera, La Scala, and the Munich Opera.
I had a tough character. If I set a goal, I'd go all-out, defending my truth, my rights, and then, "you can beat me to it."
I feel all of Russia behind me: if I sing badly, it's all over, Russia is lost. We're raised this way from childhood, and abroad, we walk on stage looking as if we're shielding a firing machine gun with our chests. The Motherland is calling!
In 1955, at 29, she married for the third time – to a cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. In 1969, the couple took in a guest at their dacha. Alexandra Solzhenitsyna and wrote an open letter in his support (the writer received the news of his being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature from them).
Since 1970, she and Rostropovich have ceased to be mentioned in the media, and restrictions have been placed on their creative activities. In 1974, she traveled abroad with him and their two daughters—officially, on a "business trip" from the Ministry of Culture. In 1978, both were stripped of their Soviet citizenship and all state awards.
They carried out anti-patriotic activities, defamed the Soviet social system, and systematically provided material assistance to subversive anti-Soviet centers and other organizations hostile to the Soviet Union.
("Ideological degenerates", Izvestia newspaper, March 16, 1978)
She lived in the United States and France. She performed in the world's largest theaters and directed operas.
Everything I do on stage is as important as a matter of life and death. If they cut off my head, only then would I not be able to finish the performance.
In 1982, she left the professional stage after playing Pushkin's Tatyana at the Paris Grand Opera. She taught and toured with concerts.
It's better to leave a few years early than a day late.
In 1990, she returned to the USSR with Rostropovich. The couple renounced their citizenship, stating that they had neither asked for it to be taken away nor returned.
She performed at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre and taught at the Moscow Conservatory.
Since 2002, she has opened the Opera Singing Center in Moscow.
In 2007, at 80, she played the lead role in "Alexander" Sokurov — a grandmother who came to the Chechen Republic to visit her grandson, an officer.
She died in 2012, at 86, in Moscow.
