The Russian opera singer Irina Arkhipova...
Arkhipova was hospitalized in late January after suffering from severe heart problems.
Irina Arkhipova, a mezzo-soprano/contralto opera singer, was born in Moscow in 1925, where she studied architecture before switching to voice. She later studied at the Moscow Conservatory. She made her debut as a singer in 1954 at the Sverdlovsk Opera, and joined Moscow"s Bolshoi Theatre two years later. She was named a People"s Artist of the USSR in 1966.
At the height of her career, in the 1970s and 1980s, she performed abroad with the Bolshoi Theater and as a guest at foreign concert halls. Her repertoire included Amneris in Giuseppe Verdi"s Aida, Marina in Modest Mussorgsky"s Boris Godunov and Marfa in Mussorgsky"s Khovanshchina, Lyubasha in Rimsky-Korsakov"s The Tsar"s Bride, Carmen in Georges Bizet"s Carmen and many others.
A winner of numerous awards, Irina Arkhipova was one of the most renowned Russian opera singers of the 20th century.