THE QUEEN OF THE OPERA – GALINA VISHNEVSKAYA
Her work embodies the whole era, so bright and exciting it turned out to be. The life of the great Galina Vishnevskaya was just as rich. The tragic pages of her biography were intertwined with world fame, and sorrows and sufferings – with real love. On stage, she created not just theatrical images, but unsurpassed examples of opera art, which, coupled with the incredible ups and downs of Galina Vishnevskaya’s personal life, could serve as a plot for an opera or a classic novel. Her emotional manner of execution melted somewhat chilly operatic art, made it closer and more understandable to the viewer. And this is not her only merit in the world of beauty.
Singing against rheumatism
Galina Vishnevskaya’s childhood became a series of endless tests, both physical and psychological, but each time fate saved her and gave her strength to live on. The girl was born on October 25, 1926, the singer Galina Vishnevskaya in Leningrad under the last name Ivanova. Her mother was half Polish in Gypsy and married when she was pregnant by another man. The marriage did not last long and, burdened by raising a baby, the woman left Galya in the care of her grandmother. For the whole life, the child had episodes of forced collectivization and pictures of the ruin of the peasantry bumped into memory.
Grandma was tormented by rheumatism, and four-year-old Galya sang for the old woman at night to distract her from pain. And when there were guests in their house in Kronstadt, the girl climbed under the table and from there shrill sang romances, not embarrassed by the public.
Pebble artist
Galina’s school years were remembered by her first performance in unison with a music teacher and the first listening to the opera Eugene Onegin on a gramophone record. Soon she was already singing Tatiana’s aria in front of her grandmother, and she begged not to include the gramophone so often. Interestingly, later her first roles on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater were Tatiana from “Eugene Onegin” and Kupava from “The Snow Maiden”, that is, party member Galina Vishnevskaya from those operas with which she once gave the gala schoolgirl. By the way, classmates often teased her with Pebbles-artist, no doubt in her natural gift.
The war in an instant forced Galina to say goodbye to her childhood. His father lived with his new wife, and his daughter’s fate was of little interest to him, she knew almost nothing about her mother, and her grandmother almost did not get up from starvation. One night she caught fire from the stove dress, and an elderly woman received severe burns, from which she died in terrible agony. All this was happening in front of Galina, who now had no idea what would happen next.
In the spring of 1942, a commission began to walk around the city in search of living people. On one of the days, the women from the commission went to the apartment of Gal. It turned out to be her salvation. She survived and entered the women’s air defense squad, where the nickname Artist was stuck to her again.
Finding a wonderful voice
The feeling of loneliness and the feeling of abandonment did not leave Galina even after the end of the blockade. Despite many friends and the attention of men, she did not want to be friends with anyone and consciously built a strong wall around herself, through which it was impossible to break through to the girl’s soul. Life made her singer Galina Vishnevskaya always be able to stand up for herself, to be inaccessible and independent, so that she could at any moment close the door behind her.
Having endured all the nightmares of the blockade, Galya with her vocal gift began to make up for lost time. The girl entered the music school, which taught adults. But there one inept teacher spoiled her natural data. She stopped taking top notes, she was convinced that she sings a mezzo-soprano. With this voice, she came to a modest eighty-year-old teacher, Vera Garina, who gave private vocal lessons for 1 ruble per hour. Galina is incredibly lucky. The teacher was able not only to understand the voice of her ward, but also to fully feel its features. It was Vera Garina who showed Galina the unmistakable and safe methods of singing, with which the girl soon became famous. She opened the top notes, and Galina became the owner of a lyric-dramatic soprano.
“Birth” of Galina Vishnevskaya
In 1944, the Leningrad Regional Operetta Theater hosted Galina Ivanova without education and any conditions, because her voice was the most important singer Galina Vishnevskaya argument. So began her artistic career. For several years of almost daily performances, Galina mastered the entire repertoire of the operetta theater and went through a harsh artistic school – she sang at minus temperatures and made up under the open sky. In the theater, Galina also met her second husband, Mark Rubin, who was the director of this cultural institution. The first marriage of the girl was unsuccessful, at the age of 17 she married a sailor, and after 4 months she broke up with him, but for the rest of her life she left her surname.
In the postwar years, the artists of the operetta theater performed in ruthless conditions, sometimes they could not withstand such loads and died right on the stage.
