Galina Pisarenko

Galina Alekseyevna Pisarenko was a Soviet and Russian opera and chamber singer, a lyric-coloratura soprano, and a vocal teacher. She was born on January 24, 1934, in Leningrad. In 1957 she graduated simultaneously from the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University and from the Maurice Thorez Moscow State Institute of Foreign Languages. She considered music her true calling: from early childhood she sang and took part in amateur artistic activities. Her grandmother brought her to her first audition with the renowned chamber singer and teacher Nina Dorliak.

Pisarenko completed music college studies and graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1961 in the class of Nina Dorliak. After finishing the conservatory, she was accepted in 1961 into the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theatre. Her debut there was in the title role of Jacques Offenbach's operetta The Beautiful Helen. She became one of the leading soloists of the theater's opera company and sang there until 1990. In 1991 she became a soloist of the Novaya Opera Theater, where she performed until 1996.

Her art was noted for brilliant command of a flexible and warmly colored voice, rare musicality, and subtle dynamic nuance. She performed leading roles in many operas and operettas by Russian and foreign composers. Among her stage roles were Tatyana in Eugene Onegin, Iolanta in Iolanta, Marfa in The Tsar's Bride, Mimì and Musetta in La Bohème, Adina in L'elisir d'amore, Manon in Manon, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro, Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Micaëla in Carmen, and the Governess in The Turn of the Screw. She also sang in works by Prokofiev, Gershwin, Britten, Offenbach, Suppé, and Millöcker.

Her chamber repertoire included works by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Mikhail Glinka, Dmitri Shostakovich, Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, George Frideric Handel, and Edvard Grieg. Over the course of her creative career she collaborated with prominent pianists such as Sviatoslav Richter, Alexander Ginzburg, Maria Yudina, and Boris Tchaikovsky, and with Russian and foreign conductors including Yevgeny Svetlanov, Yevgeny Kolobov, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Kirill Kondrashin, Dmitri Kitaenko, Rudolf Barshai, Volodymyr Kozhukhar, Kurt Masur, Roni Benise, and Thomas Sanderling.

From 1976 Pisarenko taught at the Moscow Conservatory; she became an associate professor in 1982 and a professor in 1995. She was recognized as one of the best contemporary vocal teachers. Among her students were prize-winners of the International Tchaikovsky Competition and other international and all-Russian competitions, as well as soloists of major theaters in Russia and abroad, including Irina Romishevskaya and Albina Shagimuratova. In 2002 she served on the jury of the 12th International Tchaikovsky Competition and on the juries of many other international vocal competitions. She also gave master classes in Poland, Portugal, Austria, Japan, Greece, South Korea, and Ecuador.

Pisarenko was the author of articles on vocal art. She served as president of the Moscow Society of Mozart Music Lovers. From 1999 she was an honorary professor of the Orpheon Athens Conservatory, and from 2002 a visiting professor at the American Summer Music School. Her distinctions included the Gold Medal of the Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki (1960), fourth prize at the Glinka All-Union Vocal Competition in Moscow (1962), third prize at the Ferenc Erkel International Vocal Competition in Budapest (1965), the title Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (1974), People's Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (1982), a Gold Medal and the Order "For the Development of Culture" from Poland (1999), the Order of Honor (2007), and honorary membership in the Russian Academy of Arts (2022).

Galina Pisarenko died on October 23, 2022. She was buried in Moscow at Troyekurovskoye Cemetery.

Connections

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