Farewell to Lisa Della Casa, Galina Vishnevskaya & Charles Rosen December 17 2012

Farewell to Lisa Della Casa

Lisa Della Casa lived for music until she passed away in 2012 at

the age of 93. The stunning Swiss soprano astonished audiences in Europe and the United States with her beauty, subtle stage presence, and the power of her singing voice.

A Star Is Rising

Lisa Della Casa was born on February 2, 1919, in the Swiss city of Burgdorf. She dedicated herself seriously to singing at the tender young age of 15 when she began studying at the Zurich Conservatory.

Della Casa made a significant impact from a young age in her native Switzerland. After debuting in the Solothurn-Biel Municipal Theater, she joined the Zurich Municipal Opera House and stayed there from 1943 to 1950. She sang roles from Puccini, Mozart, and Strauss’s work.

One of the most significant encounters during Della Casa’s early career occurred at the Zurich Municipal Opera House. In 1946, she sang the secondary part of Zdenka alongside the established soprano Maria Cebotari, who sang the title role of Arabella in Richard Strauss’s opera. Cebotari was impressed with Lisa’s talent and recommended her for a part at the Salzburg Festival.

The Salzburg Festival was Della Casa’s first big break and cemented her role as one of Europe’s rising sopranos.

The Height of Her Powers

After her appearance at the Salzburg Festival, Lisa Della Casa was invited to perform at the prestigious Vienna State Opera House. She remained there for most of her career, even though she would perform at other prestigious houses such as La Scala in Milan, the London Royal Opera House, and New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.

Her repertoire mostly consisted of lyrical opera, although she could give a good, subtle performance in the more dramatic compositions of the Italian style. Her favorite roles were in operas composed by Mozart and Richard Strauss. Strauss’s opera Arabella, the role that launched her career, would become her signature performance—this time as the lead Arabella, not the secondary character Zdenka where she began.

Della Casa was adept at navigating the new, modern world of opera and classical music. She recorded several opera records for the Decca label. Some of her best roles were also recorded on film. Besides opera, Lisa Della Casa also enjoyed singing German lieder, or poetry set to classical music.

Personal Life

Lisa Della Casa was always motivated by a love for music, which was threatened by her hatred of the music business. She had no stomach for the intrigue and political maneuverings it took to get cast in prominent roles. She was often careless with aspects of her career, for example, by refusing to stop smoking. When she retired, she did so without fanfare.

Della Casa was devoted to her family, which took precedent over the demands of the stage when it needed to. After a short-lived first marriage with Ernst Geiser, she married the journalist and violinist Dragan Debeljevic. When their daughter, Vesna, fell ill after complications from a brain aneurysm, she withdrew from performing for a while to take care of her.

See Lisa Della Casa autographs.

Farewell to Galina Vishnevskaya

Galina Vishnevskaya, the electrifying Russian soprano, passed

away on December 11, 2012. Her electrifying voice graced the world’s most famous opera stages and was preserved on numerous recordings and films.

Musical Career

The diva got her start as a singer in an operetta troupe and a music hall. After connecting with the vocal teacher Vera Garina, Vishnevskaya got her big break when she won a competition at Moscow’s famous Bolshoi Theatre in 1952. Her first major role was Tatiana from Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin. She would go on to be one of the Bolshoi’s most famous stars.

Besides her work at the majestic Bolshoi Theatre, Vishnevskaya also worked at the Paris Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House, and La Scala. She was most famous for performing the best of Russian opera, including works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, and Rimsky-Korsakov. Her most famous role was Tatiana, the role that was her debut. She saw it as her duty to bring the magic of Russian music even to the public that could not understand its words.

Galina Vishnevskaya’s majestic voice inspired several composers so much that they wrote parts specifically for her. Dmitri Shostakovich wrote part of the Fourteenth Symphony for her, along with other works. The English composer Benjamin Britten also wrote part of the War Requiem for her.

After Vishnevskaya retired from the opera stage, she did not leave behind her creative pursuits. She continued working with opera and theater as a stage director and the founder of the “Galina Vishnevskaya Opera Centre” in Moscow. She even wrote a memoir and starred in a film, Alexander Sokurov’s Alexandra.

Political Struggles

Unfortunately, part of Vishnevskaya’s musical career was impacted by her struggles with the political establishment of the Soviet Union. The problems began when she started to work abroad. The Soviet authorities restricted the ability of artists to work in foreign countries and often caused trouble for Galina. She was unable to attend the premiere of Britten’s War Requiem, even though the part was written for her.

The friction with authorities increased when she and her husband continued to support the dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, even welcoming him into their dacha during a time of persecution.

In 1974, Vishnevskaya fled the Soviet Union along with her family. The government reacted by stripping them all of their citizenship and officially erasing her from the history of the Bolshoi Theatre, despite all she had done to build it. After the collapse of communism, she reconciled with the theatre that was her musical home.

Personal Life

Galina Vishnevskaya married three times. Her first ill-advised marriage was to a sailor, the only thing she kept from that marriage was her stage name. Her second marriage to her manager ended in divorce after 10 years. The real love of her life was her third husband, the cellist, conductor, and pianist Mstislav Rostropovich. Rostropovich’s romance was enough to whisk Vishnevskaya out of the arms of his competitor, the Soviet premier at the time.

Besides her astonishing voice, Vishnevskaya was also known for her striking good looks and temper befitting a soprano diva.

See Galina Vishnevskaya autographs.

CHARLES ROSEN

American scholar-musician (1927-2012), pianist and author of the acclaimed book "The Classical Style" and many other books died last December 9th at age 85. 

Rosen was well known both as a writer/critic of classical music and piano music, and was an outstanding writer, considered one of the best of the 20th century.

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