Galina Pisarenko

Galina Alekseyevna Pisarenko (Russian: Галина Алексеевна Писаренко; 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.