Galina Vishevskaya’s Opera Centre celebrated its first anniversary. This centre is a kind of step between music conservatory and opera theatre. Galina Vishnevskaya is confident that an opera singer needs to go through another artistic stage between music conservatory and opera theatre so that young artists would come to the theatre already having at least three well developed parts in their repertoire. For the past five years they have staged eight operas in the centre including Ruslan and Lyudmila by Mikhail Glinka, Tsar’s Bride by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi, Faust by Charles Gounod. In the past season the repertory of the centre was added with Carmen by George Bizet, and right in the eve of the anniversary they had a opening of Eugeny Onegin by Pyotr Tchaikovsky.
They organized a special concert dedicated to the Fifth Anniversary of the centre. Vishnevksaya’s centre graduates sang in the first part of the concert whereas the second part of the concert was given to opera stars.
Since the very first day of the center’s inception, world famous artists taught their master-classes in the centre. Maestro Rostropovich was among them and he was specially remembered during this evening. The second part of the concert could be considered as a type of master-class being dominated by three opera singers – Sergei Leyferkus, Hibla Girzmave and Badri Maisuradze. They sang arias and duets from Othello, Faust and other opera masterpieces. They sang with great artistic inspiration, and truly astonishing singing freedom and ease on the chamber stage of Ostozhenka Street.
The first part was also memorable with several numbers of Galina Vishnevskaya’s students who have been in demand already. These are Oksana Kornievskaya and Oksana Lesnichaya.