Larisa Ostapenko was a Ukrainian Soviet mezzo-soprano singer. She was born on 1 January 1935 in Boryspil, Kyiv Oblast, and died in Kyiv on 17 August 2010, aged 75. She was married to the composer Oleksandr Bilash.
From 1953 to 1958, Ostapenko studied at the Kyiv Conservatory, now the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine. She then completed postgraduate study at the conservatory from 1959 to 1962 in the class of Professor Maria Snaha-Patorzhynska. In 1958–1959, she was a mezzo-soprano soloist with the Opera Studio of the Kyiv Conservatory.
Ostapenko worked at the Kyiv Philharmonic from 1965 to 1995. From 1995, she served as an associate professor in the Department of Solo Singing at the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine. Her students at the conservatory included Tetiana Havrylenko, Tetiana Lebedyntseva, Liudmyla Dubovyk, Valentyna Voinalovych, Halyna Shyshkina, and Nina Levina.
Her concert repertoire included works by Viktor Kosenko, Yulius Meitus, Oleksandr Bilash, Modest Mussorgsky, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and Mykola Lysenko, among others. She performed in Canada, Poland, and Russia, and made recordings for radio and gramophone records.
In 1964, Ostapenko was a prizewinner at the Mussorgsky Vocal Competition in Moscow. She was named a People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR in 1982 and received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour in 1991.
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