Larisa Ivanovna Avdeyeva (21 June 1925 – 10 March 2013) was a Soviet and Russian opera singer with a mezzo-soprano voice. Born in Moscow, she was the daughter of the tenor Ivan Avdeyev, a soloist of Sergei Zimin's Opera. In 1936 she began singing in the choir of a district children's arts education centre, directed by K. I. Pototsky.
Avdeyeva entered a construction institute in 1942, but left it two years later to study at the Konstantin Stanislavsky Opera and Drama Studio. Her teachers included the conductor Nikolai Golovanov, the Moscow Art Theatre actor Mikhail Kedrov, and the singer Lyubov Shor-Plotnikova. After graduating, she joined the Stanislavsky Opera and Drama Theatre, where she was a soloist in 1947–1948. From 1949 to 1952 she was a soloist at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theatre; she made her debut there as Suzuki in Puccini's Madama Butterfly.
From 1952 until 1983, Avdeyeva was a soloist at the Bolshoi Theatre of the USSR. In 1953 she won the gold medal at the vocal competition of the Fourth World Festival of Youth and Students in Bucharest. She appeared both with the Bolshoi company and by personal invitation at the Finnish Opera, Dresden Opera, the Grand Theatre in Warsaw, the Hungarian Opera Theatre, Sofia National Opera, and opera venues in Canada and France. At the 1963 Maggio Musicale Fiorentino festival, she sang Marfa in Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina.
Her repertoire included Olga and the Nurse in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin; Polina and the Countess in The Queen of Spades; Carmen in Bizet's Carmen; Marina Mniszech and Marfa in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina; Lyubasha and Lyubava in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride and Sadko; Konchakovna in Borodin's Prince Igor; Eboli in Verdi's Don Carlos; Naína in Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila; and Babulenka in Prokofiev's The Gambler. She also sang roles in operas by Tikhon Khrennikov, Kirill Molchanov, Yuri Shaporin, Ferenc Erkel, Vissarion Muradeli, Alexander Kholminov, Rodion Shchedrin, and Eduard Lazarev.
In concert, Avdeyeva gave the first Moscow performance of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder. She took part in performances of Verdi's Requiem and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and sang the solo part in Prokofiev's cantata Alexander Nevsky. Her recordings include Bolshoi Theatre performances of Eugene Onegin in 1955 and 1979 and Rimsky-Korsakov's Sadko. She portrayed Marina Mniszech in the 1955 film of Boris Godunov and provided Olga's singing voice in the 1958 film Eugene Onegin.
Avdeyeva was named an Honoured Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1955 and a People's Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1964. She received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour in 1971 and 1976. She was married to the conductor, composer and pianist Yevgeny Svetlanov. Avdeyeva died in Moscow in 2013 and was buried at Troyekurovskoye Cemetery.
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