There are three personalities living within Galina Vishnevskaya. One is an opera singer and actress, who in addition to stage performances, manifests her talents through literary writings and educational activities, both at the Opera Singing Center she founded in Moscow almost a decade ago and at St Petersburg's Shostakovich Museum. Another personality is an Athena-like woman warrior. And the third has to do with being the wife of a genius. Her marriage to the celebrated cellist Mstislav Rostropovich resembled the union between the domineering Hera and the soft-spoken Zeus.
On October 25 of this year, Mrs Vishnevskaya turns 85.
Life as a novel
"I sang for God, not for the audience," Vishnevskaya says. She says her life has been a happy one and that there is nothing she would want to change were she given a second chance.
"I am a happy woman, a happy mother and a happy wife," she said at a news conference hosted by RIA Novosti. "I had the happiest career one could wish for at the Bolshoi. And the two most important encounters in my life were with Mstislav Rostropovich and Dmitry Shostakovich."
Vishnevskaya's life resembles an adventure novel. She describes her experiences in her autobiography, "Galina. A life story," which was released in the West in 1982. The first Russian edition was released in the early 1990s, and a second edition has just come off the press.
Vishnevskaya recalls U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy saying that her book opened his eyes to Russia. She says she was compelled to write it.
In interviews, Western reporters would often ask her why she and her husband had left the Soviet Union. To avoid endless explanations, she decided to tell it all in an autobiography.
The diva hopes that the new edition of “Galina. A life story” will allow younger Russians to discover what everyday life in the Soviet Union was like.
This book is a compelling read, as is the autobiography of one of her contemporaries, the ballerina Maya Plisetskaya.
Both women write with artistry, expressing their lyricism, intuition, skepticism and at times, narcissism – a feature that the grand dames of theater can be easily forgiven.
Both biographies resemble novels, each with a talented, energetic and independent heroine who overcomes enormous obstacles on her way to self-realization, winning the love and admiration of millions. The difficulties make this Cinderella-like heroine even stronger and more determined. Her high emotions and sensitivity resonate with common sense and savvy.
Innovation and imitation
Vishnevskaya joined the Bolshoi Opera in 1952, as a “professional par excellence,” according to Boris Pokrovsky, the company’s artistic director at the time.
“I’ve been in the arts since the age of 17, since 1944, and before my arrival at the Bolshoi, I spent some time working at the Operetta Theater,” Vishnevskaya says. “I had already acquired some freedom of acting by then. These days, conservatory graduates cannot even move around the stage with grace. ”
The Russian diva, who has worked at all of the world’s major opera houses, now shares her expertise with aspiring singers at the Opera Singing Center, which was founded nine years ago. “I teach them to sing and to work toward achieving a supreme quality in everything they do.”
Vishnevskaya performed at the Bolshoi in the 1950s and ‘60s. There, she became the first-ever interpreter of operatic parts, such as Natasha Rostova in Sergei Prokofiev’s “War and Peace,” and of Dmitri Shostakovich’s vocal cycles. Her interpretation of the title part in Shostakovich’s opera, “Katerina Izmailova,” remains unmatched to this day. She appeared in the same role in the 1966 screen version, directed by Mikhail Shapiro.
Vishnevskaya resumed her cinematic career years later, appearing in Alexander Sokurov’s 2007 film, “Alexandra.” In this film, she plays a grandmother who goes to visit her grandson, an officer serving in Chechnya, and gradually grows accustomed to that very peculiar life in a military township. “This was a very interesting experience, an ‘adult,’ serious role,” she says.
Pokrovsky offered perhaps the most accurate and precise assessments of Vishnevskaya’s operatic interpretations. His essay about the diva is included in the second Russian edition of “Galina. A life story.”
Pokrovsky remarked that some of Vishnevskaya’s interpretations were both inventive and innovative (such as Kupava in “The Snowmaiden,” and Polina in Prokofiev’s “The Gambler,” to name a few), while in other cases, she imitated earlier examples (Violetta in “La Traviata,” Aida, Madama Butterfly).
Life in exile
Through the late 1960s, Vishnevskaya described herself as "happy and satisfied as an artist.” But things changed dramatically at the turn of the decade, when she and her husband faced persecution for providing refuge to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the author of the “Gulag Archipelago”. Many of their concert tours were cancelled, and their recordings were banned from the radio. They ended up leaving the country in 1974, and lost their Soviet citizenship four years after their departure.
Rostropovich later recalled that it was his wife who enabled him to live through those years of persecution, that artistic vacuum, and the subsequent difficulties during their period of emigration.
“She has always resembled the ancient Greek goddess Hera, with her strong character, her ability to impose order on life and to overcome panic,” a journalist close to the family told me.
The years that they spent in France, the UK and in the United States (for many years Rostropovich was the Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC) brought with them some important privileges, including freedom, money and new projects. But nowhere in the West did Vishnevskaya find a theater where, like at the Bolshoi, she would feel at home and where she could become master over a diverse operatic repertoire.
The couple's Russian citizenship was restored to them in the 1990s.
“I’ve made my choice, and I’m here,” Vishnevskaya said in reply to a journalist’s question as to where she prefers to live, in Russia or abroad.
She currently runs several charity organizations in this country, including ones aimed at helping disadvantaged children.
Her Opera Singing Center in Moscow has already put on several full-scale opera productions, including "Eugene Onegin," "Iolanta," "Carmen," "Rigoletto," and "Boris Godunov."
“Russia is truly rich in human talent. But unfortunately, few people receive proper training here, and professionals are hard to come by,” Vishnevskaya says. “There are too many amateurs these days. A talented artist needs to learn how to work hard. The ability to present oneself on stage is essential.”
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti
