Russian opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya dies at 86

Renowned Russian opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya passed away on Tuesday at the age of 86, the Galina Vishnevskaya Opera Center's press service told RIA Novosti.

Vishnevskaya, a former star soprano at the Bolshoi Theater, and her late husband, renowned conductor and cello player Mstislav Rostropovich, gained global recognition for their art. Their foreign careers began after they were expelled from the Soviet Union, in part for supporting dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in 1974.

In 2002, Vishnevskaya became head of a newly-built Opera Center in downtown Moscow. Since 2006, she had chaired the jury of a singing competition named in her honour: the Vishnevskaya Open International Competition of Opera Singers. She was also head of the Russian Singers’ Fair in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.