Maria Cebotari

Maria Cebotari (original name: Ciubotaru, 10 February 1910 – 9 June 1949) was a celebrated Bessarabian-born Romanian soprano and actress, and a significant opera and singing star of the 1930s and 1940s.

Beniamino Gigli stated that Cebotari was one of the greatest female voices he ever heard. Maria Callas was compared to her, and Angela Gheorghiu named Maria Cebotari among the artists she admires the most.

With thousands of people in attendance, her funeral was "one of the most imposing demonstrations of love and honor any deceased artist has ever received" in the history of Vienna, .

Biography

Cebotari was born at Chişinău, in Bessarabia, and studied singing at the Chişinău Conservatory, and in 1929 joined the Moscow Art Theater Company as an actress. Soon, she married the company's leader, Count Alexander Virubov.

Moving to Berlin with the company, she studied singing with Oskar Daniel for three months and made her debut as an operatic singer by singing Mimi in Puccini's opera ''La Bohème'' at Dresden Semperoper on 15 March 1931. Bruno Walter invited her to the Salzburg Festival, where she sang Euridice in Gluck's opera ''Orfeo ed Euridice''.

In 1935, she sang the part of Aminta in the world premiere of Richard Strauss' opera ''Die Schweigsame Frau'' under Karl Böhm at Dresden Semper Opera House. Strauss advised her to move to Berlin, and in 1936 she joined the Berlin State Opera, where she was a prima donna until 1946. That year, she sang ''Susanna'' in ''Le Nozze di Figaro'', Zerlina in ''Don Giovanni'', and Sophie in ''Der Rosenkavalier'' for Dresden Semper Opera Company's performances at Covent Garden Royal Opera House of London. From then on, she appeared at many great opera houses, including Vienna State Opera and La Scala Opera House of Milan.

She divorced Count Virubov in 1938, and married the Austrian actor Gustav Diessl, with whom she had two sons. In 1946, she left Berlin and joined the Vienna State Opera House. She visited Covent Garden again in 1947 with Vienna State Opera Company and sang Salome, Donna Anna in ''Don Giovanni,'' Countess Almaviva in ''Le nozze di Figaro''. On September 27, she was Donna Anna to the Ottavio of Richard Tauber, making his final stage appearance, less than a week before his cancerous left lung was removed.

Her husband, the actor Gustav Diessl, died of a heart attack on March 20, 1948. She suffered from severe pain during the performance of ''Le nozze di Figaro'' at La Scala Opera House in early 1949. At first, doctors did not take it seriously. However, on March 31, 1949, she fell down during the performance of Karl Millöcker's operetta ''Der Bettelstudent'' in Vienna. During surgery on April 4, doctors found cancer in her liver and pancreas. She died from cancer on June 9, 1949 in Vienna. British pianist Clifford Curzon and his wife Lucille Wallace adopted her two sons.

Cebotari had an extremely versatile voice, and her repertoire covered coloratura, soubrette, lyric and dramatic roles; for example, she sang both Countess Almaviva and Susanna in ''Le nozze di Figaro'', Violetta in ''La traviata'' and Salome in the same season. She concentrated on four composers – Mozart, Richard Strauss, Verdi, Puccini. Richard Strauss described her as "the best all-rounder on the European stage, and she is never late, and she never cancels". Herbert von Karajan, during a BBC interview decades after her death, said she was the greatest "Madame Butterfly" he had ever conducted.

Films

Beside her successful career at the opera houses, Cebotari appeared in several films related to opera—such as ''Verdi's Three Women'', ''Maria Malibran'', and ''The Dream of Madame Butterfly''.

She also played in the movie "Odessa in fiamme (Odessa in flames)", in 1942, directed by Italian director Carmine Gallone (script by Nicolae Kiriţescu).
The movie is a fascist propaganda film about the Battle of Odessa, which was won by Romanian and Nazi troops. The Romanian-Italian co-production won the great prize at the Festival of Venice, in 1942.

Maria Cebotari plays the role of Maria Teodorescu, an opera singer from Bessarabia, who was in Chisinau with her 8-year-old son at the time of the invasion. The boy was taken somewhere in Odessa. The mother was told that he will be maintained in a camp, where he will be educated as a man again, as Soviet. The mother agrees to sing Russian songs in theaters and taverns but only to get her son back. She also shares images of hers; one such image is found by chance by her husband, who is in the Romanian army with the rank of captain (he was in Bucharest at the time of the invasion). In the end, the family reunites.

"Odessa in Flames" was banned after Soviet troops reached Bucharest. Someone later rediscovered the film in the Cinecittà archives in Rome; it was screened for the first time in years in Romania in December 2006.

Director Victor Druc's documentary "Aria" (2005) about the life of Maria Cebotari faced difficulties when screening in Moldova during the Communist administration (which ended in 2009), due to a part in the movie where the soprano self-identifies as Romanian, contrary to the official policy of the Communist government that calls the ethnic majority Moldovan, rather than Romanian. See also Controversy over linguistic and ethnic identity in Moldova.

Recordings

Many of her surviving recordings are from live performances – either in the opera houses or in the studio for radio broadcast. Almost all of them have now been digitally remastered, and their general quality is remarkable. Her complete recording of ''Salome'' (live performance on September 30, 1947, at Covent Garden) shows that she is one of the greatest Salomes captured in recordings, in spite of extremely poor sound quality.

The Austrian CD label ''Preiser'' has issued several of her CDs, among which is ''The Art of Maria Cebotari'' and ''Maria Cebotari singt Richard Strauss''.

* Mozart – ''Le nozze di Figaro'' (Böhm 1938, in German/Ahlersmeyer, Teschemacher, Schöffler, Wessely, Böhme) Preiser
* Puccini – ''Turandot'' (Keilberth 1938, in German/Hauss, Buchta, Hann, Eipperle, Harlan, Schupp, Kiefer), Koch-Schwann
* Schoeck – ''Das Schloss Dürande'' (Heger live 1943, excerpts/Anders, Berglund, Fuchs, Domgraf-Fassbaender, Greindl, Hüsch), Jecklin
* R. Strauss – ''Salome'' (Krauss 1947 live/Rothmüller, Höngen), Gebhardt
* R. Strauss – ''Taillefer'' (Rother 1944/ Walter Ludwig, Hans Hotter), Preiser
* Verdi – ''Luisa Miller'' (Elmendorff 1944, in German/Böhme, Hopf, Hann, Herrmann, Eipperle), Preiser
* Verdi – ''La traviata'' (Steinkopf 1943, in German/Rosvaenge, Schlusnus), Iron Needle
* von Einem – ''Dantons Tod'' ( Fricsay live 1947/Schöffler, Patzak, Klein, Weber, Alsen, Hann), Stradivarius
* Recital (Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Leoncavallo, J. Strauss, Arditi, Rachmaninov, Beckmann, Mackeben, Tchaikovsky), Preiser – LV
* Recital – Maria Cebotari singt Arien (Mozart, J. Strauss, Gounod, Puccini and R. Strauss), Preiser – LV
* Maria Cebotari – Arien, Duette, Szenen (Mozart, Bizet, Verdi, Puccini), Preiser
* Recital – Maria Cebotari singt Richard Strauss (''Salome'', ''Feuersnot'', ''Der Rosenkavalier'', ''Daphne'', ''Taillefer''), Preiser (Berliner Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester, Artur Rother, 1–4 recorded 1943, 5 in 1944).
* Maria Cebotari: Arias, Songs and in Film, Weltbild
* Recital – Maria Cebotari singt Giuseppe Verdi (''La traviata'', ''Rigoletto''), Preiser
* Four Famous Sopranos of the Past (Gitta Alpar, Jarmila Novotná and Esther Réthy), Preiser – LV
* Bruno Walter Vol. 1, Symphony No 2 and No 4 (1948/50), LYS
* Helge Rosvaenge in Szenen aus ''André Chénier'' und ''Rigoletto'' – Duets, Preiser
* Helge Rosvaenge – Duets, Preiser – LV
* Grosse Mozartsänger Vol. 1 1922 – 1942, Orfeo
* Von der Königlichen Hofoper zur Staatsoper ‘Unter den Linden’, Preiser – LV

Filmography

* ''Troika'' (1930)
* ''Girls in White'' (1936)
* ''Mother Song'' (1937)
* '' Strong Hearts'' (1937)
* ''Giuseppe Verdi'' (1938)
* ''The Dream of Butterfly'' (1939)
* ''Love Me, Alfredo!'' (1940)
* ''Odessa in Flames'' (1942)
* ''Maria Malibran'' (1943)

Sources

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External links

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Photographs and literature

MoldovaStamps.org 1994 postage stamp of the Republic of Moldova – Maria Cebotari
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Cebotari, Maria
1910 births
1949 deaths
Burials at Döbling Cemetery
Musicians from Chișinău
People from Kishinyovsky Uyezd
Moldovan opera singers
Romanian operatic sopranos
Austrian operatic sopranos
Eastern Orthodox Christians from Moldova
Romanian emigrants to Austria
Romanian people of Moldovan descent
20th-century Romanian women opera singers
20th-century Austrian women opera singers
Deaths from cancer in Austria
Deaths from pancreatic cancer
Deaths from liver cancer
Actors from Chișinău