Galina Pisarenko

Galina Alekseyevna Pisarenko (; 24 January 1934 – 23 October 2022) was a Soviet-born Russian soprano and teacher. She showed musical promise as a child, and her aunt enrolled her in the Gnessin Institute of Music, where she graduated with a diploma in piano. She later chose to study voice instead at the Moscow Conservatory with Nina Dorliak, who became her lifelong mentor. For a time, Pisarenko studied concurrently at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations; then economics, English, and Norwegian at Moscow State University and the Maurice Thorez Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages.

After graduating from the Moscow Conservatory in 1961, Pisarenko successfully auditioned for the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre, where she earned international recognition as one of its leading singers. Yevgeny Svetlanov called her a "true master" and "diva". Dmitri Shostakovich personally selected her to perform at a festival dedicated to his life and music in 1964. From 1969 to 1976, she collaborated on a series of productions with stage director Walter Felsenstein, which led to her becoming a regular guest at the Komische Oper Berlin. She also sung the Moscow premiere of Vitaliy Hubarenko's mono-opera Tenderness to great acclaim and later recorded her interpretation.

Pisarenko became a teacher at the Moscow Conservatory in 1976, a position she held until her death. In 1990, she left the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre. She joined the Novaya Opera Theatre in 1991, eventually becoming its director. She retired from singing in 1996. She died in 2022 and is buried at Troyekurovskoye Cemetery.

Biography Early life and education Pisarenko (née Galina Alexeyevna Kuzmina) was born in Leningrad on 24 January 1934. Before her third birthday, Pisarenko's mother died from tuberculosis; her father died in 1941. Pisarenko and her older sister went to Moscow to live with their aunt, Alexandra Kuzmina, whom they called "babushka". After graduating, she worked as a translator at a television factory.

Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre After one of Pisarenko's graduation performances at the Moscow Conservatory, she was visited by , the director of the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre. He offered her the part of Desdemona in a forthcoming production of Giuseppe Verdi's Otello. Excited, she related the news to Dorliak, who cautioned Pisarenko against accepting the offer. Instead, Dorliak suggested to Pisarenko that she audition at Moscow theatres first. Pisarenko was unsure of herself, felt that she was "not worthy" of performing at such important venues, and thought it would be better to begin her professional career at a provincial theatre. When an opportunity to audition at the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre opened up, Pisarenko tried out and was accepted into the company. Pasynkov tried to get Pisarenko to reconsider her decision, but she declined, later explaining that one of the crucial reasons she preferred to work in Moscow was to remain close to Dorliak.

When Pisarenko started at the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre, she was excited to work with singers who had been trained by Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Among them were and , respectively the Tatiana and Olga in the theatre's renowned 1922 production of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. She also appeared as Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte, as Adina in Gaetano Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore; in the title roles of Jules Massenet's Manon, and Tchaikovsky's Iolanta; as both Mimi and Musetta in Giacomo Puccini's La bohème, and as Ninetta in Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges. Shostakovich later collaborated with Pisarenko again in 1972 during work on his unfinished opera, The Black Monk, for which he made an arrangement of the "Angel's Serenade" by Gaetano Braga. Together with mezzo-soprano , violinist Oleg Kagan, and pianist Sofia Khentova, Pisarenko performed it for Shostakovich while he was convalescing in the hospital in late 1972. They subsequently made a private recording for him of the arrangement. Pisarenko was among the musicians whose recordings were played at Shostakovich's funeral on 14 August 1975.

On 18 February 1996, Pisarenko, along with Oleh Krysa and Richard Carpenter, was among the musicians who performed at a concert held at CSU Long Beach's Carpenter Performing Arts Center that commemorated the 90th anniversary of Shostakovich's birth. She sang the Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok. The Los Angeles Times review of her performance said that she "threaded her lines with rich voice and pregnantly restrained expression".

Her Shostakovich repertoire included From Jewish Folk Poetry, Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok, and the Symphony No. 14.

Walter Felsenstein and the Komische Oper Berlin In 1969, the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre invited the director of the Komische Oper Berlin in East Germany, Walter Felsenstein, to lead a production of Georges Bizet's Carmen. Pisarenko, who sang the role of Micaëla, recalled that she and her fellow singers, who were mostly unfamiliar with the latest trends in staging outside of the Soviet Union, were intimidated by Felsenstein at first. Upon meeting him, he made "everyone feel at home"; they were quickly won over by his intellect and cultured bearing. They also enjoyed the directness with which he spoke about sexuality in Carmen, a subject then taboo in the Soviet Union.

In 1990, Pisarenko left the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre. A number of its musicians, led by conductor Yevgeny Kolobov, co-founded the Novaya Opera Theatre, which Pisarenko joined in 1991. She became its director in 1994. Despite creative differences between her and Kolobov, she intensely admired his conducting, and added, "And if he called me along, how could I not come?" In her first season there, she learned her final new role as the titular character in Prokofiev's Maddalena. Among those who studied with Pisarenko are Elena Guseva, of which she was president. She was also a jury member of What the 20th Century Left Us, a competition for best performances of music by Boris Tchaikovsky. According to a 2012 interview with Pisarenko published in Moskovskij Komsomolets, she said she was proud of her students' successes:

I do not want to brag at all, but [my students] have been laureates at the last three Tchaikovsky competitions. First [Anastisiya] Bakastova, then Shagimuratova, then Elena Guseva at the most recent competition. By the way, there is a recording online of Tatiana's letter scene from Eugene Onegin. Compare her performance with the Korean winner, [Seo Sunyoung]: it is the difference between heaven and earth in favor of Guseva. People's Artist of the RSFSR (1982)