They became husband and wife four days after they met and lived in perfect harmony for a long time and happy life. The love of the brilliant cellist, the most intelligent person, a reverent lover, caring husband and father Mstislav Rostropovich and the star of the world opera stage,
They became husband and wife four days after they met and lived a long and happy life in perfect harmony. The love of the brilliant cellist, the most intelligent person, a reverent lover, caring husband and father Mstislav Rostropovich and the star of the world opera stage, the first beauty Galina Vishnevskaya was so bright and beautiful that it would probably be enough for not one, but ten lives.
Lilies of the valley and cucumbers
They first saw each other in the Metropol restaurant. Rising Star Bolshoi Theater and the young cellist were among the guests at the reception of the foreign delegation. Mstislav Leopoldovich recalled: “I raise my eyes, and a goddess descends from the stairs to me... I was even speechless. And at that very moment I decided that this woman would be mine.”
When Vishnevskaya was about to leave, Rostropovich insistently offered to accompany her. “By the way, I’m married!” - Vishnevskaya warned him. “By the way, we’ll see about that later!” - he answered her. Then there was the Prague Spring festival, where all the most important things happened. There Vishnevskaya finally saw him: “Thin, with glasses, a very characteristic, intelligent face, young, but already balding, elegant,” she recalled. “As it turned out later, when he learned that I was flying to Prague, he took all his jackets and ties with him and changed them morning and evening, hoping to impress.”
At a dinner in a Prague restaurant, Rostropovich noticed that his lady “mostly leaned on pickles.” Preparing for the decisive conversation, the cellist sneaked into the singer’s room and placed a crystal vase in her closet, filling it a huge amount lilies of the valley and... pickles. To all this I attached an explanatory note: they say, I don’t know how you will react to such a bouquet, and therefore, in order to guarantee the success of the enterprise, I decided to add to it pickled cucumber, you love them so much!..
Galina Vishnevskaya recalls: “Everything possible was used,” he threw down to the last penny of his daily allowance at my feet. Literally. One day we went for a walk in a garden in upper Prague. And suddenly - a high wall. Rostropovich says: “Let’s climb over the fence.” I responded: “Are you crazy? Am I, the prima donna of the Bolshoi Theater, through the fence?” And he said to me: “I’ll drop you off now, then I’ll jump over and catch you there.” Rostropovich gave me a lift, jumped over the wall and shouted: “Come here!” - “Look at the puddles here! The rain just stopped!” Then he takes off his light cloak and throws it on the ground. And I walked over this cloak. He rushed to conquer me. And he won me over.”
“Every time I look at Galya, I marry her again”
The novel developed rapidly. Four days later they returned to Moscow, and Rostropovich posed the question bluntly: “Either you come to live with me right now - or you don’t love me, and everything is over between us.” And Vishnevskaya has a 10-year reliable marriage, a faithful and caring husband Mark Ilyich Rubin, director of the Leningrad Operetta Theater. They went through a lot together - he stayed up day and night trying to get the medicine that helped save her from tuberculosis, their only son died shortly after birth.
The situation was difficult, and then she simply ran away. She sent her husband to pick up strawberries, and she threw her robe, slippers, whatever came into her suitcase, and ran. “Where should we run? “I don’t even know the address,” Galina Pavlovna recalled. - I called Slava from the corridor: “Slava! I'm coming to you! He shouts: “I’m waiting for you!” And I yell at him: “I don’t know where to go!” He dictates: Nemirovich-Danchenko Street, house such and such. I’m running down the stairs like crazy, my legs are giving way, I don’t know how I didn’t break my head. I sat down and shouted: “Nemirovich-Danchenko Street!” And the taxi driver stared at me and said: “Yes, you can get there on foot - it’s nearby, over there, around the corner.” And I shout: “I don’t know, you’re taking me, please, I’ll pay you!”
And then the car drove up to Rostropovich’s house. Vishnevskaya was met by his sister Veronica. He himself went to the store. We went up to the apartment, opened the door, and there was my mother, Sofya Nikolaevna, standing in a nightgown, with the eternal “Belomor” in the corner of her mouth, a gray braid to the knee, one of her hands was already in a robe, the other could not get into the sleeve from excitement ... My son announced three minutes ago: “My wife will arrive now!”
“She sat down so awkwardly on a chair,” said Galina Pavlovna, “and I sat on my suitcase. And everyone suddenly burst into tears and roared. They've made their voices heard!!! Then the door opens and Rostropovich enters. He has some fish tails and bottles of champagne sticking out of his string bag. Yells: “Well, we met!”
When Rostropovich registered his marriage at the regional registry office at Vishnevskaya’s place of registration, the registrar immediately recognized the famous soloist of the Bolshoi Theater and asked who she was marrying. Seeing the rather unprepossessing groom, the receptionist smiled sympathetically at Vishnevskaya, and having difficulty reading the surname “Ro... stro... po... vich,” she told him: “Well, comrade, now you have the last opportunity to change your surname " Mstislav Leopoldovich politely thanked her for her participation, but refused to change his last name.
“Don’t give birth without me!”
“When I told Slava that we were having a child, his happiness knew no bounds. He immediately grabbed a volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets and enthusiastically began to read them to me, so that without wasting a minute, I would be imbued with beauty and begin to create in myself something equally sublime and beautiful. Since then, this book has been lying on the night table, and just as the nightingale sings over the nightingale at night when she hatches her chicks, so my husband always read me beautiful sonnets before going to bed.”
“The time has come to be relieved of the burden. Slava was on tour in England at that time. And he asked, insisted, demanded, begged that I definitely wait for him. “Don’t give birth without me!” - he shouted into the telephone receiver. And, what’s funniest, he demanded this from the other representatives of the “woman’s kingdom” - from his mother and sister, as if they could pike command stop contractions if they start for me.
And I waited! On the evening of March 17, he returned home, inspired by the success of the tour, happy and proud that the domestic Indian kingdom had fulfilled all his orders: his wife, barely moving, was sitting in a chair waiting for her master. And just as all sorts of miracles appear from a magician’s box, so fantastic silks, shawls, perfumes and some other incredibly beautiful things that I didn’t even have time to look at flew at me from Slava’s suitcase, and finally a luxurious fur coat fell out of there and fell into my lap. I just gasped and couldn’t utter a word from amazement, but the shining Slava walked around and explained:
This will suit your eyes... Order a concert dress from this. But as soon as I saw this material, it became clear to me that this was especially for you. You see how good it is that you waited for me - I’m always right. Now you will have good mood and it will be easier for you to give birth. As soon as it becomes very painful, remember something beautiful dress, and everything will pass.
He was simply bursting with pride and pleasure that he was such a wonderful, such a rich husband that he was able to present me with such beautiful things that no other theater actress has. And I knew that my “rich” husband and, as the English newspapers already wrote then, the “brilliant Rostropovich,” in order to be able to buy all these gifts for me, probably never had lunch during the two weeks of the tour, because he received for the concert was 80 pounds, and the rest of the money... was handed over to the Soviet embassy.”
On March 18, 1956, their first daughter was born. Galina Pavlovna recalls: “I wanted to call her Ekaterina, but I received a note of complaint from Slava. “I beg you not to do this. We can’t call her Ekaterina for serious technical reasons - after all, I can’t pronounce the letter “r”, and she will still tease me. Let's call her Olga." And two years later, a second girl was born, who was named Elena.
Classic house building
“He was an unusually gentle and caring father, and at the same time very strict. It got to the point of tragicomedy: Slava toured a lot, and I kept trying to reason with him, explaining how much my growing daughters needed him. “Yes, you're right!” - he agreed... and spontaneous music lessons began. He called the girls. Lena's eyes were wet beforehand - just in case. But Olya was his cellist colleague, a very lively girl, always ready to fight back. The whole trio solemnly disappeared into the office, and a quarter of an hour later screams were already coming from there, Rostropovich flew out, clutching his heart, followed by howling children.
He adored his daughters, was jealous of them, and to prevent boys from climbing over the fence to them at the dacha, he planted bushes with large thorns around it. He was so busy important issue with all seriousness, and even consulted with specialists until, finally, he found a reliable variety so that, as he explained to me, all the gentlemen would leave scraps of their pants on the spikes.
He absolutely couldn’t see jeans on girls: he didn’t like the fact that they were hugging their bottoms and seducing boys; and he reprimanded me why she brought them from abroad. And so, once arriving at the dacha after a matinee performance, I found complete darkness and mourning there. Thick black smoke was spreading across the ground, and a fire was burning out on the open veranda of our wooden house. There was a pile of ashes on the floor, and three people stood above it - the solemn Slava and the sobbing Olga and Lena. A handful of ashes is all that remains of the jeans. And yet, despite all his severity, the girls idolized their father.”
Four days
They had a happy life ahead, but very hard time: friendship with the disgraced Solzhenitsyn, deprivation of USSR citizenship, wanderings, success and demand on the world music scene, Mstislav Leopoldovich’s arrival in Moscow during the August 1991 putsch, return to the now new Russia.
Rostropovich was never afraid to show his attitude towards power. Once, after a triumphant tour in the United States, he was invited to the Soviet embassy and explained that he had to hand over the lion's share of the fee to the embassy. Rostropovich did not object, he only asked his impresario to buy a porcelain vase for the entire fee and deliver it in the evening to the embassy, where the reception was scheduled. They delivered a vase of unimaginable beauty, Rostropovich took it, admired it and... unclenched his hands. The vase hit the marble floor and shattered into pieces. Picking up one of them and carefully wrapping it in a handkerchief, he said to the ambassador: “This is mine, and the rest is yours.”
Another case is that Mstislav Leopoldovich always wanted his wife to accompany him on tour. However, the Ministry of Culture invariably refused his request. Then my friends advised me to write a petition: they say, due to my poor health, I ask permission for my wife to accompany me on the trip. Rostropovich wrote a letter: “In view of my impeccable health, I ask that my wife Galina Vishnevskaya accompany me on my trip abroad.”
...The star couple celebrated their golden wedding in the very Metropol restaurant where Vyacheslav Leopoldovich first saw his goddess. Rostropovich showed the guests a check for $40 that Reader's Digest magazine had given him. The correspondent, when interviewing him, asked: “Is it true that you married Vishnevskaya four days after you first saw her? What do you think about this? Rostropovich replied: “I really regret that I lost these four days.”
When it comes to opera, Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya involuntarily comes to mind. The singer’s biography is so interesting that books can be written on it. Difficult childhood, difficult youth, unexpected career turns and eternal love- all this happened in her life.
Biography of Galina Vishnevskaya. Childhood
In 1926, the great and unique Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya was born. Her birthplace is Leningrad. The first name of the then unknown girl was Ivanova, but people began to recognize her by her name Galina Vishnevskaya. The biography of her youth is associated with a huge number of difficult periods. When Galina was still a very little girl, her parents decided to file for divorce. As a result, the grandmother had to raise the girl.
According to Galina Vishnevskaya herself, she does not know the biography of her parents, and does not want to know, since for her they are just strangers. All that the actress knew was that her father was repressed during the war. The mother, after thirteen years of separation, did not recognize her child at all. Grandma was main support for the future opera diva.
The singer's youth
At the age of sixteen, the biography of Galina Vishnevskaya (her photo is presented) was full of losses, uncertainty and doubts. Her grandmother, unfortunately, could not survive the blockade, which greatly undermined the girl’s morale.
Left completely alone, she managed to get into one of the air defense units. Here the soldiers had the opportunity to enjoy the voice of Galina Vishnevskaya. The biography of her musical creativity received its first wave just in part. At that time, Galya Ivanova was often invited to participate in encouraging concert programs for the military. Her voice sounded both at sea and on land.
After a year of service, the girl was hired at the Vyborg House of Culture. Here, in the biography of Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya, a line was written about working as an assistant lighting designer. The war was coming to an end, and life in the city was getting better again. One of the first to be restored was the local music school. Then, without thinking for a second, the great singer Galina Vishnevskaya went to this school to study. From that moment on, her biography opened a new chapter - work in the choir of the Leningrad Operetta. After a short amount of time, Galina brilliantly performed solo parts.
Music in Vishnevskaya's life
The brief biography of Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya cannot be described in two words. This is especially true for her musical activity, the turning point of which was 1952. During this period, she managed to pass the casting for the Bolshoi Theater troupe. The fact that she was accepted for an internship was a huge success for the singer, because the classical music education she didn't have it. Her talent immediately captivated the management. And almost from the first days she had the opportunity to perform the role of Leonora in the opera Fidelio.
Magnificent vocal abilities very quickly turned an ordinary girl into a prima of the Bolshoi Theater. At that time, she owned five main roles in various operas. Until the sixties, she can confidently be called a very successful singer. During this period opera diva sent on tours abroad. There she conquered many American cities, as well as Milan and Paris.
In 1966, a story about working in cinema appeared in the biography of Galina Vishnevskaya. She was lucky enough to play the main role in Shostakovich’s work “Katerina Izmailova”. In the same year, the singer graduated from the Moscow Conservatory as an external student.
Foreign wanderings
The decline of Vishnevskaya’s career as an opera singer occurred in 1960. The main reason This was due to the fact that Vishnevskaya, together with her third husband Rostropovich, strongly supported Solzhenitsyn, who was expelled from the Writers' Union at that time.
They began to write about Vishnevskaya in a negative way in the print media, she was forbidden to tour and record new records. Vishnevskaya saw her last chance in going abroad. The singer's husband was the first to go west "on reconnaissance." Then, under the pretext of a long trip, she herself left. The daughters of Galina Vishnevskaya, whose biography is touched upon in the “Personal Life” section, went on a trip with their parents.
The first location of this family was France. Then they lived a little in America and England. As a result, the decision was made to purchase their own home in the territory of their beloved France. In this regard, USSR citizenship was taken away from the family of Galina Vishnevskaya. In the biography, the singer’s nationality is indicated as Russian, but her citizenship at that time became French. Vishnevskaya was not worried about this. In France she performed at best scenes, here she was adored and appreciated. Having completed her opera career, she began staging performances. Also important in her work was the writing of memoirs, the first of which was published in Washington.
Return to homeland
In 1990, the couple decided to return to their roots. When they moved to Russia, they wanted to return all their titles and honors, as well as the citizenship taken away in the seventies. But there was a refusal from Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya. The spouses did not renounce their homeland and their citizenship and, in their opinion, they do not need to return it.
Career development in Russia
Since 1993, Vishnevskaya began working at the Chekhov Theater. Here she got several leading roles. Nine years later she had the opportunity to take up the post of head of the Moscow Opera Center. For Vishnevskaya, this was the main thing of her life; she always dreamed of doing exactly this and was happy that she achieved this goal. She taught at her center five days a week. On weekends she conducted additional master classes. Tickets sold quickly, people bought them in a matter of minutes.
Another thing happened in 2007 important event V creative life Vishnevskaya - she starred in leading role in the film "Alexandra".
Personal life
In the biography of Galina Vishnevskaya, marriage fit into her youth. The simple but talented girl was 17 years old at the time. Her chosen one was a long-distance sailor named Georgy Vishnevsky. The marriage turned out to be short-lived and lasted only a few months, but the surname of the first spouse went with the singer throughout her entire life.
Vishnevskaya’s second marriage happened to Mark Rubin. The husband was more than twenty years older than the singer. In marriage, Galina Pavlovna had a son, Ilya, who passed away while still a baby. She lived with Rubin for ten years and, perhaps, would have lived further, but another man appeared on her way.
Meeting Mstislav Rostropovich at a youth festival forced Vishnevskaya to completely change her life. She very quickly married him and gave birth to his wife two daughters. The star spouses lived together for more than fifty years. Their life was long and truly happy, as they doted on each other. You can learn more about their happy life from the documentary film “Two in the World.” The singer’s most important words are that despite all the persecution and difficulties in their lives, the couple’s family relationship was ideal. Vishnevskaya would never want to change anything.
Departure
At the end of 2012, terrible news broke - the great singer and actress Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya passed away. Her death was natural, she just ran out vitality. At the time of her death, the actress was 87 years old. Five years before she left, she lost her husband. Therefore, her life was no longer so happy. The funeral service for Vishnevskaya was held in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. It was decided to bury the singer on Novodevichy Cemetery.
Memorable places
The era of Galina Vishnevskaya was full of bright events, incredible roles and fascinating roles. Memory of great singer lives to this day. The following objects are named in her honor:
- Vishnevskaya Street - located in Novokosino. This decision was made in 2013 by the Moscow government.
- Liner "G. Vishnevskaya is the name of one of the Aeroflot airbuses.
- Vishnevskaya College is located in Moscow. Field of activity: music and theater arts.
- Galina Vishnevskaya Music School is located in Kronstadt.
- Minor planet - a solar system object number 4919 is named after Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya.
Awards
Vishnevskaya’s honorary titles and awards are very difficult to count.
The singer first received the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR in 1955. Then she was given the title of People's.
She also has ten medals in her collection. different levels. These include medals “For the Defense of Leningrad” and “Veteran of Labor”.
Galina Pavlovna was also awarded orders of varying degrees five times. Among them are the Order of Lenin and the Order of Merit for the Fatherland.
During her life in France, the singer was awarded a variety of awards. Among them are the Order of the Legion of Honor and the Diamond Medal of the City of Paris.
List of the most striking opera roles at the Bolshoi Theater
In total, during her time at the Bolshoi Theater, Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya performed more than 20 roles. In her performance, the viewer was able to meet many different characters. Among them:
- Beautiful Tatiana in Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin.
- The unique Margarita in Gounod’s work entitled “Faust”.
- Soulful Zinka in “The Fate of Man” by Dzerzhinsky.
- Sensual Natasha Rostova in the legendary production by Prokofiev based on the novel by L. N. Tolstoy “War and Peace”.
- Romantic Francesca in the opera Francesca da Rimini
In addition to the Bolshoi Theater, the singer performed in others. She had the opportunity to act in the role of such characters as Iolanta, Liu, Desdemona, Lady Macbeth. As for Vishnevskaya’s filmography, she starred in 4 films. She worked as a voice actor several times. Her works include such opera films as “Eugene Onegin”, “Free Wind”, “Boris Godunov”.
Vishnevskaya also has numerous participations in documentaries. IN different times she managed to star in such films as “Our Beloved Young Grandfather”, “The Female Face of War”, “Galina Vishnevskaya. A Romance with Glory”.
Dear reader, thank you for deciding to read the article “Galina Vishnevskaya and Mstislav Rostropovich: a life story.” It would be unfair not to write about this amazing couple.
About her:
Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya (née Ivanova), years of life 1926 - 2012, opera singer, actress, theater director, teacher; soloist of the Bolshoi Theater of the USSR in 1952-1974. People's Artist of the USSR, Full Recipient of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland.
Difficult childhood
She was born on October 25, 1926 in Leningrad, (zodiac sign - Scorpio). Parents: father was a worker, mother was a housewife. When the girl was five years old, her parents separated. The granddaughter was taken in by her grandmother (father's mother), who lived in Kronstadt. Galina lived in a communal apartment, but surprisingly, in her inner feeling she was a queen.
Youth
Grandmother died during the blockade in February 1942, Galya was left alone. Soon she was taken into the local air defense detachment.
In 1943 she got a job at the Vyborg House of Culture as a stage lighting assistant. Then she began studying vocals at the Rimsky-Korsakov Music School.
Scene
Galina Pavlovna began her stage activity in 1944 at the Leningrad Regional Operetta Theater, then became a soloist of the Leningrad Philharmonic and performed as a pop singer.
From 1952 to 1974 she was a soloist at the Bolshoi Theater, on whose stage she sang about 30 roles. She sang on the largest stages in the world (Covent Garden, Metropolitan Opera, Grand Opera, La Scala, Munich Opera, etc.)
At 56 years old, Vishnevskaya left the professional stage and took up teaching activities. In 2002, she created and headed the Center for Opera Singing in Moscow.
Personal life
Galina Pavlovna was married three times. He first married at the age of 17 to naval officer Georgy Vishnevsky, whom he divorced two months later. I haven’t changed my last name since then.
Her second husband was a violinist, at that time the director of the Leningrad Operetta Theater, Mark Rubin. He was twenty-two years older. In 1945, their two-month-old son died. Soon Galina fell ill with tuberculosis. Her husband insisted that she go to a sanatorium. Over time, the disease was overcome.
The third and husband was the famous cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.
About him:
Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich (1927-2007) - Soviet and Russian cellist, pianist and conductor, public figure, teacher. People's Artist USSR. Laureate of the Lenin Prize, Stalin Prize of the second degree and two State Prizes of Russia. Five-time Grammy Award winner.
Parents
On March 27, 1927, a son was born into a family of professional musicians - cellist Leopold Rostropovich, the son of pianist and composer Vitold Rostropovich, and pianist Sofia Fedotova. He was named Mstislav.
Slava started playing music in early childhood with parents. In 1932-1937 he studied in Moscow in Music College named after Mussorgsky.
In 1941 his family was evacuated to the city of Chkalov, where Mstislav studied at music school, where his father taught. At the age of 16, he entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied cello with Semyon Kozolupov and composition with S. S. Prokofiev and D. D. Shostakovich.
Fame
Rostropovich gained fame as a cellist in 1945, winning gold medal Third All-Union Competition of Performing Musicians in Moscow. In 1947 he won 1st prize at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Prague.
Thanks to international contracts and tours, Rostropovich became famous in the West. Three composers had a huge influence on the formation of his personality: Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten.
He was a talented, kind, positive and intelligent person.
About them:
The brilliant cellist won the heart of the prima donna of the Bolshoi Theater. The unforgettable Prague spring of 1955 became the spring of their lives! Galina Vishnevskaya and Mstislav Rostropovich became husband and wife four days after they met at a festival in Prague and lived a long, happy life. From this beautiful love two daughters Olga and Elena were born.
Mstislav Leopoldovich was a reverent, caring husband and father. Life has prepared severe trials for them. At the end of the sixties, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union.
Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich supported Solzhenitsyn, inviting him to live at their dacha, which was one of the reasons for the constant attention and pressure from the intelligence services
Soon, Vishnevskaya’s tours were banned; she was not allowed to travel abroad and record records. The persecution continued for five years and this was the reason that Galina Pavlovna persuaded her husband to go abroad.
In 1974, Mstislav Rostropovich went on tour abroad, and later his wife followed him along with their daughters. Officially, it was formalized as a long business trip abroad. In fact, they had no intention of returning.
Galina Vishnevskaya and her daughters Elena and Olga
The family lived in France, the USA and the UK. When it became known in the Union that the couple bought an apartment in Paris, in 1978, by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Galina Vishnevskaya and Mstislav Rostropovich were deprived of citizenship, honorary titles and awards.
Soon Rostropovich was invited to the USA. National symphony orchestra offered him the position of chief conductor. The family moved after him. Galina Pavlovna performed on stages all the time the best theaters and wrote the book “Galina”.
Book "Galina"
The book was published in Washington in 1984 and became a bestseller; it traveled around the world and only then came to Russia.
Vishnevskaya about the book: “I did not write this book for the Soviet reader. It never occurred to me that during my lifetime it could be published in Russia. I'm not going to redo it, let everything remain as it was...
Do you think I wrote about everything? No, not about everything. If I wrote about everything, no one would believe me. I felt the need to write about painful things, about my fate. I had to do this. And it helped me move on with my life.”
Return
In the nineties, the couple returned to their homeland, where they were soon returned to all orders and regalia, as well as Soviet citizenship. But they renounced their citizenship.
At the anniversary of Galina Vishnevskaya in Bolshoi Theater. Moscow 2001
In the summer of 2006, Mstislav Leopoldovich became seriously ill, then he underwent two operations due to a malignant liver tumor. Died in Moscow on April 27, 2007.
Galina Pavlovna survived her husband by five years; she died on December 11, 2012, at the age of 87 in Moscow.
Galina Vishnevskaya and Mstislav Rostropovich were buried nearby at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow. On the marble cross there is a line from the Gospel: “Blessed are those who are exiled for the sake of righteousness.” The words fit the biography of both Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya perfectly. A unique union - creative and family. They are together again...
ladies and gentlemen
Galina Vishnevskaya - who was this woman? In this article you will find an interview with the artist, and you can also read an excerpt from the book “Galina. Life story."
At school, the teachers really liked to shame me: “Polina, you’re already in the fifth grade, but you still haven’t learned the multiplication tables!”, “With such an attitude towards learning, you will become a cleaner!”, “Physics is not important.” less literature, it develops the mind!” And only one Elena Maratovna, a teacher of musical literature and solfeggio, she sincerely pitied me, because she understood: I would never be able to distinguish a quatra from a third, not from laziness in studying, but from a complete lack of musical data. Her pity for me was truly Christian, because it was expressed not in inflating grades and patting me on the head, but in a desire to interest, captivate, teach in spite of everything.
And she did correct bet: brought me a neatly wrapped book with “GALINA” written on the cover.
I read this book day, night and another half day. Swollen from crying. I understood a lot. And after six months of daily practice, she won the city Olympics based on Prokofiev’s work, only because Vishnevskaya herself loved him!
This is how Elena Maratovna achieved her good goal... And I grew up, graduated from music school, bought myself my own “Galina” and it so happens that every year “a day, a night and another half a day” fall out of my life - with age you read everything new and new there ...
I have long dreamed of meeting Vishnevskaya and interviewing her. Almost impossible. She very rarely communicates with journalists, rightly believing that she has already said everything she wanted.
At the end of November, Vishnevskaya was awarded the title of Honorary Professor at Moscow University. She came to Vorobyovy Gory with her daughter, smiled a lot, accepted bouquets and thanked her as usual. Vishnevskaya has so many awards and titles (including, by the way, the Order of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Princess Olga) that she is no stranger to it!
It seems to me that her heart was melted not so much by the academic choir, which soulfully performed “Many Years,” but by the oldest professor at the university, Gleb Vsevolodovich Dobrovolsky, who admitted with emotion that he and his wife named their daughters Tatyana and Natalya for a reason, but “remembering the wonderful images which you, dear Galina Pavlovna, created on the stage of the Bolshoi in the 50s.”
In general, everything turned out in such a way that Galina Pavlovna agreed to answer three questions. And while we walked about 10 meters from the hall of official events to the office of the rector of Moscow State University Sadovnichy (and the path lies among the columns that decorated the first Cathedral of Christ the Savior: after the explosion they were kept in a special storage facility, and then installed in the main building of the university), I realized that I would enter selfishly and ask about what worries me.
And then somehow it turned out that I was not original: most women think about these very problems:
First the children, then everything else!
Galina Pavlovna, many modern women are faced with a choice: children or success at work. You have the most brilliant career imaginable and two daughters, whom you not only raised in the literal sense of the word, but also in whom you poured your soul, for example, personally making music with them, traveling...
- Yes, yes ( turns with a smile to his daughter sitting nearby). It seems to me that a woman cannot give her soul only to children, each of us has a calling, and we need to combine raising children with something else. This is normal, there is nothing wrong with it, a woman should not feel any special merit: this is a normal physical state for her - to carry “the whole world” within herself, because no one has yet been born in a different way! And so it will be forever and ever. And in general, this is the most important purpose of a woman and we must start from here: first children, then everything else!
— Galina Pavlovna, you always look very elegant, both on stage and in everyday life. Share your secret! What should poor women who cannot buy expensive designer clothes do?
- ANY woman can look VERY good while spending minimal money on it. You need to pick up a needle and thread! Try to make, sew for yourself something that will decorate you. I know what I’m talking about: when I was 16 years old (the blockade of Leningrad had already been broken, but not lifted), I entered the Operetta Theater, and I had nothing at all, nothing to wear. I constantly mended my stockings. You bend the holes, bend them, and then there’s nothing left to bend... Then I learned to sew. I made my first dress when I was given a maroon chintz. As I remember now, there were small, small black and white peas on it, like berries! ( Shows on himself)
I was absolutely alone, my grandmother died... I sewed amazing dresses for myself! One of them had such a wide skirt (and I had a thin waist, naturally: both from hunger and from youth), a lantern sleeve, everything was gathered... I need to learn to sew and make chic dresses for myself! I don’t recognize the word “I can’t” at all. If you don't know how, learn!
Galina Pavlovna, you, like no one else, know what grief is. There have been many difficulties along your path, and among them is the worst thing that can befall a woman - the death of a child... You recently became a widow... However, we always see you active and thriving. What do you advise women to do if, God forbid, trouble happens?
- You know, there are no recipes here. We must LIVE. We have to live, that's all.
How it succeeds (and whether it succeeds) is another question.
About Galina
On the day of Mstislav Rostropovich’s death, my friend said bitterly: “Soon the very concept of “Russian intelligentsia” will become archaic... And our children will have the same vague popular ideas about it as we do about the nobility.” Unfortunately, one cannot but agree with her, but today I would like to talk about the life of the widow of maestro Rostropovich, thank God, alive, working, doing charity work and looking great for her age - a great singer and courageous woman - Galina Vishnevskaya
Scary, premature, loud-mouthed - the fruit of a deeply unhappy marriage between a beautiful half-gypsy woman and a very young man, she was given as an “orphan” to be raised by her grandmother. Goat milk from a bottle, chewed bread in a rag and a cooling oven - this is how the future Galina Vishnevskaya was nursed in Kronstadt.
Orphan
The mother and well-to-do father handed over the unloved child to a family already struggling to make ends meet. There was no talk of any help from her parents, and little Galya always felt that they pitied her, “and my whole childish insides protested against this humiliating pity...” However, grandmother’s love did its job, and the child’s heart, rejected by her mother, began to gradually thaw.
They lived hard: a penny pension and the salary of his grandmother’s youngest son, a simple worker (“Andrey, half-starved himself, fed me. For him it was normal, and therefore it was considered that he was a fool”), a communal apartment with special wealth: a Becker piano, a large mirrored wardrobe and antique clothes in it (all “inheritance” from the former owner of the apartment - the admiral). And bitter drunkenness, which seemed to afflict all Russian men.
Pebble the artist
The nickname given by the children, the sobs of the grandmother from plaintive songs and the phrase of the first school teacher: “I think Galya will have a special destiny” is already a recognition of talent, but indirect. The direct result was the prize for singing received in first grade - three meters of chintz!
For her tenth birthday, Gala’s mother gave her a gramophone and records of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin.” The communal apartment moaned. The opera was memorized: “From my real life, filled to the limit with pictures of drunkenness, naked lies and crackling marches, I was suddenly carried away into another, hitherto unknown and inaccessible to me world of beauty, magical sounds, unearthly purity. And I never went back.”
“I will be an artist, I will be a singer!” - the decision was made once and for all (in just 15 years, Vishnevskaya will sing the role of Tatiana on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater).
War
Childhood ended when the war came. In 1941, Gala turned 14. And then the Blockade began. At that time the mother lived with her new husband on Far East, and my father stole food from a military warehouse for new mistress, who feasted on roast goose in 1942!
Galya and her grandmother were plump from hunger. We survived all the horrors that were possible... Grandmother eventually died from burns: her dress caught fire and she had no strength to move away from the potbelly stove, which was heated with furniture... In February 1942, she was buried in mass grave. A kind, merciful and generous Russian woman, Daria Alexandrovna Ivanova...
Study!
Galina was left alone. Miraculously, she survived until spring (“indifference set in, indifference to my real fate, that state that, in general, helped me survive”). She ended up in the “Blue Division” (a detachment of 400 women who carried out truly inhuman labor to clear the city) and in the jazz orchestra of a naval military unit. She survived both guardhouses and manual repairs of the city sewer system... And her first love. He was a sailor and soon died. Probably it was this last loss (“I felt sick and hopeless after his death!”) that led the sixteen-year-old girl to the decision: “Study!” However, six months later, having lost her top notes (the teacher’s unprofessionalism), Galina is again left alone with Northern Palmyra...
First marriage
“Eventually my loneliness led me to marriage. In the summer of 1944, I married Georgy Vishnevsky, a young sailor. Within a week it became clear that our marriage was a mistake. He didn’t want me to sing, to study, to go on stage.” He was jealous of his young wife, even of the old teacher, lay in wait, watched... The final scandal broke out after Galina entered the Operetta Theater, which also put an end to the marriage. “We separated forever after two months of married life, and only the last name - Vishnevskaya - reminds me that it really happened.”
Artistic career
Galina became a soloist according to the “classical” scenario: literally three months after joining the theater, panic occurred: the soloist broke her leg, and on tour there was only one cast, there were no replacements. The director addresses the choir:
- Girls, who can help us out and play today?
Galina was just waiting for this moment!
- I can!
- Do you know the role?
- Hurry to the rehearsal!
They worked in terrible, inhuman conditions, giving 25 concerts a month. Art is hard, exhausting work, Galya realized. And she accepted the rules of the game.
Second husband
He is 40, she is 18. She is a soloist, he is a theater director. They got married. A real family has appeared. “I gave birth to a son. As soon as I had time to cross my forehead, a labor attack of eclampsia began...” And it ended with the child dying at two and a half months. The horrors of those days are impossible to describe: “I can’t even imagine how I endured all this? And I was only 19 years old.” A few months later she buried her mother, she died in terrible agony from uterine cancer, before her death she tearfully asked her daughter for forgiveness and punished: “Beware of tuberculosis and do not trust men, they are all worthless...”
In the spring, advanced tuberculosis was discovered. You need to apply a pneumothorax (inflate, compress the lung) - the end of your singing career, otherwise - death. The patient chose the latter and jumped off the operating table. Thanks to God and speculative streptomycin, the disease went away. First of all, to lessons with Vera Nikolaevna Garina, who within two years returned Vishnevskaya’s lost soprano.
"Bolshoi Theater...
...The USSR announces a competition for a trainee group.” I saw the poster by chance. She sang the most difficult aria from “Aida” with almost no preparation, created a sensation, won and, with the blessing of her beloved teacher, left for Moscow. Vishnevskaya immediately fell in love with the Bolshoi stage. The HR department - no: a 20-page application form and 58 from my father. If they get to the bottom of it, there will be no theater in sight! But it happened!!! “I became an artist in one of the best theaters in the world! I was 25 years old."
Muscovite
For six months I had to poke around in strange corners, then my husband managed to exchange a room in Leningrad for a ten-meter kennel in Moscow. This was the former back entrance of a former seven-room apartment at the intersection of Stoleshnikov and Petrovka. Cement floor, chad and stairs instead of ceiling. So the leading soloist of the Bolshoi lived with her husband for four years. “But I didn’t perceive my situation as tragic: they allowed me to register in Moscow, I have a roof over my head, it’s a three-minute walk to the theater.” Here they worked on Leonora in Fidelio, Tatiana in Onegin, Kupava in The Snow Maiden, Madame Butterfly...
Cellist
He was introduced to her at the Metropol in 1955, and by that time she had been married for 10 years, although she lived with her husband more like a friend, a break was already inevitable.
The second meeting with Mstislav Rostropovich took place on tour in Prague. The whole world knows in detail some episodes of those days. About lilies of the valley (“he and I went out into the street, near the hotel there is a woman with a full basket of lilies of the valley. He takes out the whole armful - and into my hands!”), about pickles (“we are running down the street: “Look, Slava, pickles!” It's a shame the store is closed." And about lilies of the valley with cucumbers: “I came to my room, I opened the closet, and in it, like a white ghost, there was a huge crystal vase, and in it were lilies of the valley and pickled cucumbers! Well, when did he have time?!”
Four days later they decided that upon arrival in Moscow they would get married.
Rostropovich rushed to buy sets, chandeliers and blankets. Deficits reigned in Russia.
The registry office belonged to the same area as the Bolshoi Theater, and its artists received a special attitude. And so
Oh, Galina Pavlovna, what a joy it is to see you here! Are you getting married?
Yes, get married.
Please sit down, give me your passport, darling...
And - to Glory, already coldly and officially, even with a slight sigh, they say, there is such happiness for people:
Give us your passport too.
So, we write the name of the spouses: Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya and M-stislav - Lord, what a difficult name - Le o pol dovich Rost... Rosr... Comrade, what is your last name?
Rostropovich.
Comrade Rassupovich, what a name! Now you have such a happy opportunity - change your last name and you will be - she rolled her eyes and didn’t even speak, but seemed to sing: Vishne e eevsky!
“The surprise turned out to be that he is a great musician, and I am good singer. But the first perception remained forever the main thing in our relationship: for me he is the man whose wife I became after four days of meeting him, and for him I am the woman in front of whom he suddenly knelt.”
Galina Pavlovna
After six months of family life in a communal apartment, with her husband’s mother-in-law and sister, the newlyweds moved into their own cooperative 100-meter apartment, bought by Rostropovich with the Stalin Prize. Galina Pavlovna remembers how long it took her to get used to the huge living space...
In the eighth month of pregnancy, the first opera record (Onegin) was recorded at Melodiya. And in time for the birth, Rostropovich returned from another tour with a bunch of gifts, among which was a gorgeous fur coat (“Although I was already unbearable from the contractions, yet I, having put on a new fur coat, to the horror of my husband, crouched and went to my room to admire the yourself in the mirror").
Great USSR
Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich lived too actively: premieres, numerous tours abroad, two daughters, dissident Solzhenitsyn living in their dacha, loud disputes with those in power... The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR could not stand such “impudence” and on March 15, 1978 decided to deprive them of USSR citizenship Rostropovich M.L. and Vishnevskaya G.P., given that they “systematically commit actions that are detrimental to the prestige of the USSR and are incompatible with belonging to Soviet citizenship.” Choking with sobs, Galka the artist, she is also the prima donna of the Bolshoi Theater, the world star Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya and her family left their homeland. It seemed like forever...
Boris Pokrovsky wrote: “An actress with a capital A, she was forced to part with the Bolshoi Theater at the time of her creative maturity, success, and fame. Why? Why did the theater have to lose one of its main artistic forces? Because the moral responsibility of the Actress before the fate of her husband, a great musician, even prevailed over her love for the Bolshoi Theater.”
Triumphant return
In 1992, a grand evening was held at the Bolshoi Theater to mark the 45th anniversary of creative activity Galina Vishnevskaya: “And I went on the stage of my native theater. And again, after 18 years of absence, I experienced all the previous feelings - love, rapture, fear, delight - and every minute, throughout the evening, I felt how the old pain was leaving me, drop by drop...” The evening was grandiose, the live broadcast from the theater lasted 3 hours, Channel One even canceled the evening newscast.
Another high-profile event is the celebration of the 50th wedding anniversary at the Metropol. The holiday was grandiose. On the tables there were vases with lilies of the valley and pickles.
Death of husband
Mstislav Rostropovich, who is recognized as the best cellist of the 20th century, died on April 27 of this year in a Moscow hospital at the age of 80. A few days before, he celebrated his anniversary on a grand scale in the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin managed to award him the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 1st degree, a few days before his death.
Widow
Vishnevskaya continues to work. When he is in Moscow, he lives either on Gazetny Lane or in his own Opera Singing Center, where there is a studio apartment. Galina Pavlovna goes down one floor in the morning to the students. In the evening - home. “I’ll eat, wash the dishes and go to bed.” The simple life of a woman who became a myth.
All quotes are based on the book by Galina Vishnevskaya “Galina. Life story" - Rusich, 1999
Photo by Anna Podolskaya
Tatyana Larina and Natasha Rostova
Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya (nee Ivanova). Born on October 25, 1926 in Leningrad - died on December 11, 2012 in Moscow. Soviet and Russian opera singer (soprano), actress, theater director, teacher. People's Artist of the USSR (1966).
Almost all of her childhood was spent in Kronstadt.
My father was repressed before the war. She survived the siege of Leningrad, and at the age of sixteen she served in air defense units. At the same time, she took part in concerts: she sang accompanied by a jazz orchestra on ships, Kronstadt forts, and in dugouts.
In 1943-1944, she studied for six months at the Music School for Adults named after. N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov in Leningrad, in the classroom solo singing I.S. Did-Zurabova.
Since 1947 she worked at the Leningrad Philharmonic.
Since 1951, she took vocal lessons from V.N. Garina in Leningrad, alternating classical vocal classes with performances as a pop singer.
In 1952, she took part in a competition for the trainee group of the Bolshoi Theater, was accepted, despite the lack of a conservatory education, and soon, in the figurative expression of B.A. Pokrovsky, became “the trump card in the deck of the Bolshoi Theater”, the leading soloist of the main opera house countries where she performed more than 30 roles.
At this time, the singer was patronized by a resident recent years in the service of N.A. Bulganin.
Since 1955, she has toured abroad: Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Finland, Great Britain, Italy, France, Belgium, USA, Canada, Yugoslavia, Austria, Japan, Australia, New Zealand etc.
Performed at Covent Garden (London), Metropolitan Opera (New York), Paris national opera, La Scala (Milan), Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, San Francisco Opera.
In 1966 she graduated from the Moscow Conservatory as an external student.
In 1966, she starred in the title role in the opera film “Katerina Izmailova” by D. D. Shostakovich (directed by M. G. Shapiro).
She performed a lot in concerts. The singer's chamber repertoire includes works by M. P. Mussorgsky, P. I. Tchaikovsky, S. S. Prokofiev, D. D. Shostakovich, R. Schumann, R. Wagner, C. Debussy, R. Strauss, M. de Falla etc. She was the first performer of a number of works dedicated to her by D. D. Shostakovich, B. Britten and other outstanding contemporary composers. Impressed by listening to her recording of “Brazilian Bahiana,” A. A. Akhmatova’s poem “Listening to Singing” (1961) was written.
She has performed and recorded with major conductors: G. von Karajan, O. Klemperer, I. B. Markevich, G. Abendrot, A. Sh. Melik-Pashayev, B. E. Khaikin and others.
She was the partner of outstanding singers: S. Ya. Lemeshev, I. S. Kozlovsky, G. M. Nelepp, I. I. Petrov, I. K. Arkhipova, and abroad - D. Fischer-Dieskau, P. Domingo, N. Geddy et al.
She became one of the first Soviet opera singers to achieve worldwide recognition. opera stage(a broadcast recording of the 1964 performance of the La Scala Theater (Milan) “Turandot” by G. Puccini, published on CD, where she performed together with F. Corelli and B. Nilsson, recorded her triumphant success in the role of Liu).
The singer's extensive discography contains recordings of operas and chamber music.
In September 1969, G. Vishnevskaya and M. Rostropovich offered to live at their dacha to A.I. Solzhenitsyn, and in October 1970 they wrote an open letter in his support. In response to this, the authorities almost completely excluded mention of the singer in the media and introduced restrictions on creative activity. Nevertheless, the singer continued to perform at the Bolshoi Theater, successfully toured abroad, and in 1971 she was awarded the Order of Lenin.
In March 1974, together with her husband, they applied for permission to travel abroad, which was granted. In the same year, I went abroad with my husband and children for a long period of time, which was formalized as a business trip of the USSR Ministry of Culture.
While abroad, in March 1978, G. Vishnevskaya and M. Rostropovich were deprived of Soviet citizenship and state awards - “for actions discrediting the title of citizen of the USSR.”
Lived in the USA and France. The singer performed in largest theaters world, staged opera performances as a director. G. Vishnevskaya’s farewell performance took place at the Paris Grand Opera in October 1982 (in the opera “Eugene Onegin” by P. I. Tchaikovsky, conducted by M. Rostropovich), after which she left the professional stage and took up teaching. Continued concert activities, recorded records, conducted master classes.
In January 1990, after appeals from a number of artists, G. Vishnevskaya and M. Rostropovich were returned to USSR citizenship, and the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the deprivation of state awards was cancelled.
In February 1990, she returned to the USSR and became an honorary professor at the Moscow Conservatory. They refused citizenship, stating that they did not ask for it to be taken away or returned. She lived with a Swiss passport until the end of her days.
Since 1993, she has performed as a dramatic actress on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov in Moscow (the role of Catherine the Second in E. A. Gremina’s play “Behind the Mirror”), played leading roles in the films “Provincial Benefit Performance” (based on the plays of A. N. Ostrovsky, directed by A. A. Belinsky, 1993) and “ Alexandra" (director A. N. Sokurov, 2007).
Since 2002 - head of the Galina Vishnevskaya Center for Opera Singing in Moscow.
Since 2006 - Chairman of the jury of the Open International Competition opera artists Galina Vishnevskaya. President of the All-Russian Singers' Fair in Yekaterinburg.
In 1984, she wrote the book “Galina”, in which the singer talks about her life and evaluates extremely negatively social order in the USSR. The book was published in English, Russian and many other European languages. In the USSR, the book was published during the years of Perestroika. On October 24, 2011, G. Vishnevskaya presented a new edition of the book “Galina. Life Story” dedicated to her anniversary.
She died on December 11, 2012 at the age of 87 in Moscow. The farewell ceremony took place on December 13 at the Opera Singing Center. On December 14, a funeral service took place in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
She was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery along with Mstislav Rostropovich.
The following were named in honor of Galina Vishnevskaya:
Galina Vishnevskaya Street in the Moscow district of Novokosino. On June 26, 2013, the Moscow Government decided to give the projected passage No. 326, located in the Novokosino district of the Eastern Administrative District of Moscow between Suzdal and Novokosinskaya streets, the name Galina Vishnevskaya Street.
- Airbus A321 airliner of Aeroflot airline “G. Vishnevskaya".
- College of Musical and Theater Arts No. 61 named after G. Vishnevskaya in Moscow.
- Children's music school No. 8 in Kronstadt is named after G. Vishnevskaya.
- Minor planet of the solar system No. 4919.
Galina Vishnevskaya's height: 161 centimeters.
Personal life of Galina Vishnevskaya:
She was married three times.
First husband - Georgy Vishnevsky, a military sailor. The marriage lasted several months in 1944.
Second husband is Mark Ilyich Rubin, director of the Leningrad Regional Operetta Theater. Civil and official marriage lasted from 1944 to 1955. The couple had a son, Ilya Rubin (died in infancy in 1945).
Third husband - (1927-2007), conductor, cellist.
She married him in 1955 - four days after they met. Subsequently, she performed with him in the ensemble at the most prestigious concert venues in the world (M.L. Rostropovich first worked as a pianist, and later as a conductor).
They were married from 1955 to 2007.
They had two daughters.
Eldest daughter - Olga Mstislavovna Rostropovich(born 1956), cellist, heads the M. Rostropovich Music Foundation, which helps young musicians and conducts annual festivals, also currently - artistic director Opera Singing Center.
Youngest daughter - Elena Mstislavovna Rostropovich(born 1958), pianist, runs the Vishnevskaya-Rostropovich international medical foundation, which vaccinates children around the world.
Six grandchildren: Ivan, Sergey, Nastasya, Oleg, Alexander, Mstislav.
Filmography of Galina Vishnevskaya:
1966 - Katerina Izmailova (film-opera) - Katerina Lvovna Izmailova
1972 - Star in the Night - Adeline Patti
1990 - Mstislav Rostropovich. Return (documentary)
1992 - Our beloved young grandfather (documentary)
1993 - Provincial benefit performance (based on the plays of A. N. Ostrovsky) (director A. A. Belinsky) - Kruchinina
1994 - Alfred Schnittke. Portrait with friends (documentary)
2006 - Elegy of life. Rostropovich. Vishnevskaya (director A. N. Sokurov) (documentary)
2007 - Alexandra (dir. A. N. Sokurov) - grandmother Alexandra Nikolaevna
2008 - The female face of war. "Katyusha" (documentary)
2009 - Two in the world. Galina Vishnevskaya and Mstislav Rostropovich (documentary)
2010 - Vladimir Maksimov (from the series documentaries Islands on the TV channel "Culture")
2011 - Witnesses. Galina Vishnevskaya. Romance with fame (director A. Grechikha) (documentary)
Works of Galina Vishnevskaya at the Leningrad Regional Operetta Theater:
“Wedding in Malinovka” by B. A. Alexandrov - Yarinka
“The Bird Seller” by K. Zeller - Christina
“The Violet of Montmartre” by I. Kalman - Ninon
Galina Vishnevskaya - Aida
Opera premieres by Galina Vishnevskaya:
Bolshoi Theater:
1953 - “Eugene Onegin” by P. I. Tchaikovsky - Tatyana
1954 - “Fidelio” by L. van Beethoven - Leonora
1955 - “The Snow Maiden” by N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov - Kupava
1957 - “The Taming of the Shrew” by V. Shebalin - Katarina
1957 - “The Marriage of Figaro” by W. Mozart - Cherubino
1957 - “Cio-Cio-san” by G. Puccini - Butterfly
1958 - “Aida” by G. Verdi - Aida
1959 - " Queen of Spades» P. I. Tchaikovsky - Lisa
1959 - War and Peace" by S. S. Prokofiev - Natasha Rostova
1962 - “Falstaff” by G. Verdi - Alice Ford
1962 - “Faust” by C. Gounod - Margarita
1962 - “The Stone Guest” by A. S. Dargomyzhsky - Donna Anna
1962 - “The Fate of Man” by I. I. Dzerzhinsky - Zinka
1964 - “La Traviata” by G. Verdi - Violetta
1964 - “October” by V. Muradeli - Marina
1965 - “The Human Voice” by F. Poulenc - Heroine
1970 - “Semyon Kotko” by S. S. Prokofiev - Sofia
1970 - " The Tsar's Bride» N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov - Marfa
1971 - “Tosca” by G. Puccini - Floria Tosca
1973 - “Francesca da Rimini” by S. Rachmaninoff - Francesca
1974 - “The Player” by S. S. Prokofiev - Polina
Other theaters:
1964 - “Turandot” by G. Puccini - Liu (La Scala, Milan)
1969 - “Othello” by G. Verdi - Desdemona (Moscow)
1976 - “Macbeth” by G. Verdi - Lady Macbeth (Edinburgh)
1981 - “Iolanta” by P. Tchaikovsky - Iolanta (Washington)
1983 - “Prison” by M. M. Landovsky (Aix-en-Provence)
Galina Vishnevskaya - Bolero
Concert premieres of Galina Vishnevskaya:
1957 - Ninth Symphony l. van Beethoven - soprano part
1958 - “Requiem” by G. Verdi - soprano part
1961 - “Satires” by D. D. Shostakovich
1962 - “Songs and Dances of Death” by M. P. Mussorgsky, orchestrated by D. D. Shostakovich
1962 - Solemn Mass of L. van Beethoven (Edinburgh)
1963 - “War Requiem” by B. Britten (London)
1963 - Second Symphony of G. Mahler (Vienna)
1965 - “The Echo of the Poet” by B. Britten
1965 - G. Mahler's Fourth Symphony
1967 - Vocal cycle by D. D. Shostakovich to poems by A. A. Blok
1969 - Fourteenth Symphony by D. D. Shostakovich
1972 - Vocal cycle “Without the Sun” by M. P. Mussorgsky with orchestra
1979 - “The Child is Calling” by M. M. Landovsky (Washington)
1981 - Te Deum by K. Penderecki (Washington)
1983 - “Polish Requiem” by K. Penderecki (Washington)