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Galina Vishnevskaya

Her name will always be linked with that of the touching Tatiana, Pushkin's character in his utter masterpiece, Eugene Onegin by Tchaivoksky, one of the world’s most beautiful operas. The young Galina dreamed of this character - as much as Tatiana dreamed of the dashing Eugene who never wanted her: but the young soprano would make her dream a reality, becoming THE Tatiana of her times. Nicknamed "Star of the Bolshoi", the hardy Russian soprano had a dark childhood. A drunken father, an absent mother, she bore the full brunt of the siege of Leningrad, where she lost her parents and a part of her family. With her husband, cellist, pianist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovitch, she formed a couple which became a kind of window onto Russian culture for the rest of the world. But the support that they gave to dissident intellectuals (Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn), and their friendship with Shostakovich, drew the ire of the Soviet regime and saw them plunged into disgrace. They would leave the USSR in 1974, stripped of their citizenship. Refugees in the USA, they finally came to rest in Paris.


A lyrical soprano as much as a dramatic soprano, Galina Vishnevskaya excelled in the Russian repertoire, of course, especially in Shostakovich's operas where she played a smouldering Lady Macbeth. It was for her that Shostakovich would write Satires, and the very profound Seven Romances on Verses by Alexander Block. This legend of the golden age of the Bolshoi, which she joined in 1953, also sang, from 1961, in the Met in New York, where she made her début with Aïda.  At La Scala in Milan she played Liù (Turandot) with Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli as partners.


Performer and dedicatee of many works, War Requiem by Britten, Symphony no 14 by Shostakovitch, Polish Requiem by Penderecki, she also became a screen actress in Alexandra, the film by Alexandre Sokourov shown at the 2007 Cannes Festival, in which she plays the title role. In 1996 she even became a new operatic heroine, not this time as a performer, but as a fictional character: in Galina, an opera written by Marcel Landowski based on her autobiography and brought to the stage at the Lyon Opéra, directed by John Nelson.


This titan of song and politics leaves us a discography which perfectly reflects her tastes and talent. Her first recording of Eugene Onegin (there would be others later on), made at the Bolshoi in 1955 under the direction of Boris Khaikine, remains legendary and a compulsory addition to any record collection. Hers is a fiery and passionate Tatiana, alongside tenor Sergey Lemechev, the finest and most moving Lenski ever yet recorded. To complete the legend, let us not forget her Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in Shostakovich's black masterpiece, under the direction of Rostropovitch, or her Natasha in War and Peace, Prokofiev's vast opera (with 45 characters), recorded in Paris with the French National Orchestra in 1986, also conducted by Rostropovich.


It was with the latter, with baton or at the piano, that she recorded The Queen of Spades and Iolanta by Tchaikovsky, alongside many Russian melodies and romances. Alongside her studio recordings, we also find live recordings on Qobuz which remain a precious testimony to the singer in repertoires other than the official records.


© François Hudry/QOBUZ/November 2017
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