Galina Vishnevskaya and Mstislav Rostropovich: life story, video

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Galina Vishnevskaya: biography

Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya (nee Ivanova), years of life 1926 – 2012. Opera singer, actress, theater director, teacher. Soloist of the Bolshoi Theater of the USSR from 1952 to 1974. People’s Artist of the USSR, Full Cavalier of the Order of Merit to the Fatherland.

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 broke up. The granddaughter was taken up by her grandmother (father’s mother), who lived in Kronstadt. Galina lived in a communal apartment, but surprisingly, by her inner feeling she was a queen.

Grandmother died during the blockade in February 1942, Galya was left alone. Soon she was taken to the local air defense detachment. In 1943 she got a job at the Vyborg House of Culture as an assistant to the stage lighting. Then she began to study vocals at the Rimsky-Korsakov Music School.

Galina Pavlovna began her stage career in 1944 at the Leningrad Regional Operetta Theater, then became a soloist of the Leningrad Philharmonic, performed as a pop singer.

From 1952 to 1974 she was a soloist of the Bolshoi Theater, on the stage of which she sang about 30 parts. She sang on the largest stages in the world (Covent Garden, Metropolitan Opera, Grand Opera, La Scala, Munich Opera, etc.)

At 56, Vishnevskaya left the professional scene and took up teaching. In 2002, she founded and headed the Opera Singing Center in Moscow.

Galina Pavlovna was married three times. The first time he married at the age of 17, a naval officer Georgy Vishnevsky, with whom she divorced two months later. She has not changed her surname since then.

Her second husband was the violinist Mark Rubin. At that time he was the director of the Leningrad Operetta Theater. He was twenty-two years older. In 1945, their two-month-old son died. Soon Galina fell ill with tuberculosis. The husband insisted that she go to the sanatorium. Over time, the disease was defeated.

The famous cellist Mstislav Rostropovich became the third and husband.

Mstislav Rostropovich: biography

Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich (1927 – 2007) – Soviet and Russian cellist, pianist and conductor, public figure, teacher. People’s Artist of the USSR. Laureate of the Lenin Prize, the Stalin Prize of the second degree and two State Prizes of Russia. Five-time Grammy Award winner.

On March 27, 1927, in the city of Baku, a son was born into a family of professional musicians – cellist Leopold Rostropovich (son of pianist and composer Vitold Rostropovich) and pianist Sofia Fedotova. He was named Mstislav.

Slava began studying music in early childhood with his parents. In 1932-1937 he studied in Moscow at the Musorgsky College of Music.

His family in 1941 was evacuated to the city of Chkalov. There Mstislav studied at the 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. Prokofiev and D. D. Shostakovich.

Rostropovich rose to fame as a cellist in 1945, winning the gold medal at the Third All-Union Competition of Music Performers 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 greatly influenced the formation of his personality: Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitry Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten.

He was a talented, kind, positive and intelligent person.

Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich

The brilliant cellist won the heart of the Bolshoi Theater prima donna. The unforgettable Prague spring of 1955 was 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 and happy life.

This beautiful love gave birth to two daughters Olga and Elena. Mstislav Leopoldovich was an anxious, caring husband and father, but life prepared them severe trials. In the late sixties, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers’ Union.

Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich supported Solzhenitsyn, inviting him to live at his dacha. This act became one of the reasons for the constant attention and pressure from the special services.

Soon, Vishnevskaya’s tours were banned. They were not allowed to travel abroad and record records. The bullying lasted five years! This was the reason that Galina Pavlovna persuaded her husband to go abroad.

In 1974 Mstislav Rostropovich went on a foreign tour. Later, the wife went after him with her daughters. It was officially formalized as a long trip abroad. In fact, they were not going to return.

The family lived in France, the USA and the UK. When it became known in the Union that the spouses bought an apartment in Paris – in 1978, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Galina Vishnevskaya and Mstislav Rostropovich were deprived of their citizenship, honorary titles and awards.

Soon Rostropovich was invited to the United States. The National Symphony Orchestra offered him the position of chief conductor. The family moved in after him. Galina Pavlovna all the time performed on the stages of the best theaters and wrote the book “Galina”.

The book “Galina”

The book was published in Washington DC in 1984 and became a bestseller. She went around the whole world and only then came to Russia.

Galina 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 remake it, let everything remain as it was …

Do you think I wrote about everything? No, not everything. If I had written about everything, no one would have believed me. I had a need to write about painful things and about my destiny. I had to do it. And it helped me to live on ”.

Homecoming

In the nineties, the couple returned to their homeland. Soon they were given back all orders and regalia, as well as Soviet citizenship. But they renounced citizenship.

In the summer of 2006, Mstislav Leopoldovich fell seriously ill. He then underwent two operations in connection with a malignant liver tumor. Died in Moscow on April 27, 2007.

Galina Pavlovna survived her husband by only five years. She died on December 11, 2012 at the 87th year of her life in Moscow.

Galina Vishnevskaya and Mstislav Rostropovich were buried next to the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow. On the marble cross there is a line from the Gospel: “Blessed are those driven out for righteousness.” The words fit their biography as well as possible. A unique union – creative and family. They are together again …

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