Raisa Gorbacheva Raisa Gorbacheva Raisa Maximovna Gorbacheva ( "Raisa Maksimovna Gorbachyova", , Титаре́нко; 5 January 1932 – 20 September 1999) was a Russian activist who was the wife of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. She raised funds for the preservation of Russian cultural heritage, fostering of new talent, and treatment programs for children's blood cancer. Raisa Maximovna Titarenko was born in the city of Rubtsovsk in the Altai region of Siberia. She was the eldest of three children of Maxim Andreyevich Titarenko, a railway engineer originally from Chernigov in Ukraine, and his Siberian wife, Alexandra Petrovna Porada, originally from Veseloyarsk. She spent her
Rosa Raisa to compose the final scene from Puccini's sketches. The premiere was on 25 April 1926 with Raisa as Turandot, Miguel Fleta, the acclaimed Spanish tenor as Calaf, and Maria Zamboni, a Scala lyric soprano, cast as Liu, replacing Edith Mason who was pregnant. It is at this performance that Toscanini stopped the performance at the place Puccini stopped composing, addressing the audience with essentially these words "here is where the Maestro died." John Gutman of the Metropolitan Opera in a 1962 interview with Raisa asked her if the artists knew that Toscanini would make this gesture. Raisa said that there