GALINA VISHNEVSKAYA (Leningrad 25 October 1926 –Moscow 11  December 2012)

(cover of the autobiography)

Click here to read a review of her autobiography

click here to read an obituary (NY Times)

Click here to read another obituary (Russia Today in English with many photos)

Click here to watch President Putin paying tribute to Vishnevskaya and meeting the family

  (portrait + Aida, courtesy Charles Mintzer)

"From the large, deluxe 1958 Bolshoi commemorative book, cloth-bound of luxurious padded fabric decorated with hammers and sickles. She is accorded two pages, only the likes of Lemeshev, Kozlovsky and Reizen, for example, get more coverage as well as ballet dancers like Ulanova and the rising Plisetskaya. in the 1973 commemorative coffee-table book she is not listed at all in the historic retrospective. This opera volume and its complementary ballet volume centers on the operas and ballets associated with the Bolshoi and has for each work a page of small photos of important interpreters of the roles. She is not shown in the "War and Peace" or "Eugene Onegin," although she created Natasha in the first and was an important Tatyana in the second. This heavy-handed political editing was part of the system." (Charles Mintzer)

(Leonora in Fidelio and Kutsava in Sneguruchka (Snow Maiden) from a deluxe 1958 commemorative volume celebrating the Bolshioi opera and dance comapnies.
Also an early Tatyana in Eugene Onegin from the same volume)