Diva who shed hardship to dazzle the west No singer felt the highs and lows of Soviet life as acutely as Galina Vishnevskaya, who has died aged 86. As the leading soprano at Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre in the 1950s and 1960s, she had privileged access to Communist party leaders and was regularly summoned to their diplomatic receptions and private functions. But when Vishnevskaya and her husband, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, sheltered the dissident novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, she experienced the chill of official disapproval. In 1974, aged 47 and at the height of her fame, the couple and two daughters (who survive her and are both musicians) departed from the Soviet Union. They were later deprived of citizenship. Obituary Elisabeth Murdoch, 1909-2012, philanthropist Obituary Joseph Murray,1919-2012, transplant pioneer Obituary María Gorrostieta, mayor of Tiquicheo, 1976-2002 Obituary Elliott Carter, composer, 1908-2012 Obituary Warsame Shire Awale, 1950s-2012, poet, playwright and performer At a time of life when most leading sopranos start to reap the reward of years invested in their art, Vishnevskaya had to start afresh. Her career never fully recovered, and she was increasingly eclipsed by her husband's fame. In her 1984 memoir A Russian Story, she poignantly described how, "as the peasant works the land, I, too, have sowed, cultivated, laboured. But now that harvest time has come, my crop - my standing field of grain - has been demolished. There is no longer time enough to cultivate again. Born in Leningrad on October 25 1926, the daughter of an army officer and a Polish gypsy, Vishnevskaya used the words "peasant" and "labour" with due care and feeling. Brought up by her paternal grandmother in poverty, she was the archetypal survivor. She endured starvation during the wartime siege of Leningrad, the loss of her 10-week-old son while she was still a teenager, a career-threatening bout of tuberculosis - and, in later life, years of nomadic exile and the frequent infidelity of her husband. All these experiences bred in her a toughness and pride. Vishnevskaya's vocal talent was noticed from an early age. She began her career aged 18 at the Leningrad operetta theatre, whose founder, Mark Rubin, became her second husband (her first marriage to a sailor was shortlived). In 1952 she made her debut at the Bolshoi, where her characterful voice, hot temperament, imposing looks and polished artistry attracted attention. When she and Rostropovich met in Prague in 1955, he swept her off her feet. Their marriage, though stormy, lasted until his death in 2007. Vishnevskaya sang most great soprano roles of the Italian and Russian repertoire, notably Tatiana (Eugene Onegin), Lisa (The Queen of Spades), Violetta (La traviata) and the title roles in Tosca and Aïda. As Aïda she debuted at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1961 and a year later at Covent Garden, where she was praised for a warm, liquid tone and passionate style - though some found her acting exaggerated. Those very qualities ensured her outstanding success, on stage, screen and disc, as Katerina Ismailova, the murderous adulteress-with-a-heart in Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. It helped that she knew the composer. Throughout the 1960s she and Rostropovich lived next door to him in Moscow. He dedicated his song-cycle Seven Romances on Verses by Alexander Blok to her and made his last public performance in 1966 accompanying her on the piano. The other composer with whom she will always be associated is Benjamin Britten. She and Rostropovich met him at a concert in London in 1961 and he wrote the soprano part in his War Requiem for her. Although the Soviet authorities refused her travel permission to perform at the 1962 Coventry premiere, she sings on the composer's recording of the work. Vishnevskaya was not immune to unwanted pressure. The KGB asked her to inform on Bolshoi colleagues and Nikolai Bulganin, prime minister, repeatedly tried to seduce her. Recalling her encounters with the hierarchy, she said she found them to be "men of crude manners, sparse education, a worm's eye view of the larger world and unspeakable conceit. They were the tip of the Mafia and they didn't make much attempt to conceal it. The number of times I had to sing to the chomping jaws of our drunken leaders is too many to remember. Though the west never heard her at her best, Vishnevskaya raised the temperature of any performance in which she sang. I first heard her when she starred in Verdi's Macbeth at the 1976 Edinburgh festival. Her voice encompassed lyricism and drama, while her stage presence fused grandeur and vulnerability, no more tellingly than in Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking scene. The family settled in Washington and Paris. As her singing career wound down she took up directing, appeared in films and, after the fall of communism, threw herself into good works - principally through the Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya Foundation, which provides food, medicine and equipment to children's hospitals throughout the former Soviet territories.