Galina Vishnevskaya Opera Centre, Moscow, 11 June 2010

The opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya (1926–2012) was the wife of Mstislav Rostropovich. For a summary of her association with Britten, see BBLL 5, p. 325; for her memoirs, see Galina: A Russian Story (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1984).

[Interview translated from the Russian]

How acquainted were you with Britten's music before you first met him?

I did not know Britten's music at all before I met him. In 1961 I gave a recital at the Aldeburgh Festival accompanied by Rostropovich, and Ben Britten and Peter Pears were present. I sang Musorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death and Tchaikovsky's romances in the first half, then Schumann, Bellini, Verdi, and Richard Strauss [plus Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Puccini]. It was a crazy programme; I think I sang everything. After the concert Ben came to see me in the wings. He expressed his admiration and said that he was beginning to write War Requiem, and that he wanted to write a soprano part for me:

If he had not heard me that night, perhaps there would have been a completely different structure to this work, and the female part would not have been there. The influences of my concert are obvious: Liber scriptus [she sings], it's the image of the Commander in Songs and Dances of Death: very rough. The ‘Benedictus’, on the other hand, is like an Italian aria. And in general, my part stands out in his entire creative work; it's not like anything else he composed. My entire programme is there somewhere, and maybe it interfered with his work, and prevented him from composing differently.