Rita Streich (18 December 1920 – 20 March 1987) was one of the most admired and recorded lyric coloratura sopranos of the post-war period. Rita Streich was born in Barnaul, southern Siberia, in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), to a German father who had been a prisoner of war there, and a Russian mother. She moved to Germany with her parents during her childhood. She grew up speaking both German and Russian fluently, something that was extremely helpful during her later ...