After graduating from the Moscow Conservatory in 1961, Pisarenko successfully auditioned for the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre, where she earned international recognition as one of its leading singers.

From 1969 to 1976, she collaborated on a series of productions with stage director Walter Felsenstein, which led to her becoming a regular guest at the Komische Oper Berlin.

She also sung the Moscow premiere of Vitaliy Hubarenko's mono-opera Tenderness to great acclaim and later recorded her interpretation.

She chose to sing a Russian folk song, "In a Field There Was a Birch Tree [ru]", and was immediately accepted into the Gnessin Institute.

[3] Afterwards, Pisarenko graduated high school, where she received a gold medal for scholastic achievement, and subsequently enrolled in the Moscow Conservatory.

[3] Initially, Pisarenko was confident in her abilities, but quickly lost faith in herself because she heard fellow student singers whose voices "seemed better" than hers.

When you step onto the stage, with all the lights, attention, and applause trained onto you, you either have to be the real Musetta or not even bother showing up.

[3] As a result of the MGIMO's reorganization in 1954, Pisarenko had to leave the school, but was allowed to continue her studies at any institution for the humanities of her choice.

[5] After one of Pisarenko's graduation performances at the Moscow Conservatory, she was visited by Emil Pasynkov [ru], the director of the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre.

Pisarenko was unsure of herself, felt that she was "not worthy" of performing at such important venues, and thought it would be better to begin her professional career at a provincial theatre.

Pasynkov tried to get Pisarenko to reconsider her decision, but she declined, later explaining that one of the crucial reasons she preferred to work in Moscow was to remain close to Dorliak.

We did a great many sketches to get into the character of Hélène: all her entries, movements, and gestures had to be worked out in the minutest detail before I could even utter a single line.

[7] She also appeared as Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte, as Adina in Gaetano Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore; in the title roles of Jules Massenet's Manon, and Tchaikovsky's Iolanta; as both Mimi and Musetta in Giacomo Puccini's La bohème, and as Ninetta in Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges.

Based on a short story by Henri Barbusse, the expressionistic one-act opera had provoked controversy at its 1971 world premiere in Kiev, but Pisarenko's performance helped to earn it widespread praise in the Soviet Union.

[3]Pisarenko subsequently recorded Tenderness for Melodiya with the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra conducted by Volodymyr Kozhukhar.

[6] In February 1964, Pisarenko was among the musicians selected by Dmitri Shostakovich to perform at a nine-day festival in Gorky dedicated to his music and influence.

[9] Shostakovich later collaborated with Pisarenko again in 1972 during work on his unfinished opera, The Black Monk, for which he made an arrangement of the "Angel's Serenade" by Gaetano Braga.

Together with mezzo-soprano Lyudmila Filatova [ru], violinist Oleg Kagan, and pianist Sofia Khentova, Pisarenko performed it for Shostakovich while he was convalescing in the hospital in late 1972.

The Los Angeles Times review of her performance said that she "threaded her lines with rich voice and pregnantly restrained expression".

[12] Her Shostakovich repertoire included From Jewish Folk Poetry,[13] Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok,[14] and the Symphony No.

[15] In 1969, the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre invited the director of the Komische Oper Berlin in East Germany, Walter Felsenstein, to lead a production of Georges Bizet's Carmen.

Pisarenko, who sang the role of Micaëla, recalled that she and her fellow singers, who were mostly unfamiliar with the latest trends in staging outside of the Soviet Union, were intimidated by Felsenstein at first.

[2] In 1981, Pisarenko performed with Sviatoslav Richter at the first December Evenings Festival, which he co-founded with the director of the Pushkin Museum.

[6] She recalled that he was "very supportive", but that she also felt under great pressure when singing with him: It was very rewarding, but [Richter] did not tolerate any kind of superficiality.

A number of its musicians, led by conductor Yevgeny Kolobov, co-founded the Novaya Opera Theatre, which Pisarenko joined in 1991.

[3] In 2017, she led the creation the Nina Dorliak Competition, which was co-founded by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Moscow Society of Mozart Lovers,[20] of which she was president.

Compare her performance with the Korean winner, [Seo Sunyoung]: it is the difference between heaven and earth in favor of Guseva.

[1] Pisarenko disapproved of opera being sung in translation, saying that a singer was obligated to sing in the work's original language.

The voice is no longer the main focus ...[16]Pisarenko was the soprano soloist in a 1979 recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff's The Bells, alongside tenor Aleksei Maslennikov and baritone Sergei Yakovenko, with Yevgeny Svetlanov conducting the Yurlov Russian Choir and the USSR Symphony Orchestra.

Pisarenko said of this program: Our work was not only in making sense of Szymanowski's complex music, not just surmounting purely vocal challenges, but also Richter was seeking a particular psychological state for each song […] For example, in the first song he said that one ought to feel like a young man overwhelmed with wonder at the beauty before him; a state of awe in which he is ready to fly into the sky.