The Russian mezzo who founded one of the great vocal competitions has passed at the age of 75.

The great Russian mezzo-soprano Elena Obraztsova has died at the age of 75. Her death in Germany was reported by the head of her influential cultural centre and foundation. She was abroad receiving medical treatment.

Elena Obraztsova was born in 1939 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) during the famous World War II siege. Her father subsequently left for the front and the family remained in besieged Leningrad up to the end of the winter of 1942 when they were evacuated to the small town of Ustjuzhnu.

Obraztsova started singing at the age of five spending hours glued to the radio during opera transmissions. She received musical encouragement from her father, an engineer by profession, who was also an excellent baritone and played the violin. In 1954 she was sent to Rostov’s Tchaikovsky musical college in Taganrog where she studied with Anna Timofeevna Kulikova and from 1957 she studied at the Rostov on Don music school, becoming a student at the Leningrad Conservatory in 1958. In 1964 she  graduated with a “5  plus” – a mark which had not been given to any...