Galina Vishnevskaya

In December, Galina Vishnevskaya – opera singer, actress, teacher and political dissident – died in Moscow. She was 86.

Born Galina Ivanova in Leningrad, Vishnevskaya grew up in harrowing family circumstances and lived through the 872-day blockade of Leningrad during World War II.

Music had been an important part of Vishnevskaya's life from an early age, and she began her career at the Leningrad Operetta Theater in 1944, then moved to the Bolshoi in Moscow, where she was a soloist from 1952-1974, performing over 30 roles, and where the distinguished director Boris Pokrovsky called her "the trump card in the theater's deck."