Maria Cebotari
Encyclopedia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
, Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
(now Republic of Moldova), who made her career in Germany & Austria.
Biography
Cebotari was born at ChişinăuChisinau
Chișinău is the capital and largest municipality of Moldova. It is also its main industrial and commercial centre and is located in the middle of the country, on the river Bîc...
, 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
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
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
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
's opera La Bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
at Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
Semperoper
Semperoper
The Semperoper is the opera house of the Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden and the concert hall of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden . It is located near the Elbe River in the historic center of Dresden, Germany.The opera house was originally built by the architect Gottfried Semper in 1841...
on 15 March 1931. Bruno Walter
Bruno Walter
Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor. He is considered one of the best known conductors of the 20th century. Walter was born in Berlin, but is known to have lived in several countries between 1933 and 1939, before finally settling in the United States in 1939...
invited her to the Salzburg Festival
Salzburg Festival
The Salzburg Festival is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer within the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...
, where she sang Euridice in Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...
's opera Orfeo ed Euridice
Orfeo ed Euridice
Orfeo ed Euridice is an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck based on the myth of Orpheus, set to a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi. It belongs to the genre of the azione teatrale, meaning an opera on a mythological subject with choruses and dancing...
.
In 1935, she sang the part of Aminta
Aminta
Aminta is a play written by Torquato Tasso in 1573, represented during a garden party at the court of Ferrara. Both the actors and the public were noble persons living at the Court, who could understand subtle allusions the poet made to that style of life, in contrast with the life of shepherds,...
in the world premiere of Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
' opera Die Schweigsame Frau under Karl Böhm
Karl Böhm
Karl August Leopold Böhm was an Austrian conductor. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century.- Education :...
at Dresden Semper Opera House. Strauss advised her to move to Berlin, and in 1936 she joined the Berlin State Opera
Berlin State Opera
The Staatsoper Unter den Linden is a German opera company. Its permanent home is the opera house on the Unter den Linden boulevard in the Mitte district of Berlin, which also hosts the Staatskapelle Berlin orchestra.-Early years:...
, 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
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. From then on, she appeared at many great opera houses including Vienna State Opera
Vienna State Opera
The Vienna State Opera is an opera house – and opera company – with a history dating back to the mid-19th century. It is located in the centre of Vienna, Austria. It was originally called the Vienna Court Opera . In 1920, with the replacement of the Habsburg Monarchy by the First Austrian...
and La Scala
La Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
Opera House of Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
.
She divorced Count Virubov in 1938, and married the Austrian actor Gustav Diessl
Gustav Diessl
Gustav Diessl was an Austrian artist, and film and stage actor.-Biography:Diessl was born Gustav Karl Balthasar in Vienna. In 1916, he was an extra on different stages in Vienna but was soon recruited into the army for World War I...
, 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
Salome (opera)
Salome is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by the composer, based on Hedwig Lachmann’s German translation of the French play Salomé by Oscar Wilde. Strauss dedicated the opera to his friend Sir Edgar Speyer....
, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
, Countess Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro.
Her husband, 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
Karl Millöcker
Carl Joseph Millöcker , was an Austrian composer of operettas and a conductor.He was born in Vienna, where he studied the flute at the Vienna Conservatory. While holding various conducting posts in the city, he began to compose operettas...
's operetta Der Bettelstudent in Vienna. During surgery on April 4, doctors found cancer in her liver and pancreas. She died of cancer on June 9, 1949 in Vienna. British pianist Sir Clifford Curzon
Clifford Curzon
Sir Clifford Michael Curzon, CBE was an English pianist.-Early life:Clifford Michael Siegenberg was born in London to Michael and Constance Mary Siegenberg...
adopted her two sons.
Cebotari had an extremely versatile voice, and her repertoire covered coloratura
Coloratura
Coloratura has several meanings. The word is originally from Italian, literally meaning "coloring", and derives from the Latin word colorare . When used in English, the term specifically refers to elaborate melody, particularly in vocal music and especially in operatic singing of the 18th and...
, soubrette
Soubrette
A soubrette is a female stock character in opera and theatre. The term arrived in English from Provençal via French, and means "conceited" or "coy".-Theater:...
, lyric and dramatic roles; for example, she sang both Carmen and Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, Violetta in La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
and Salome in the same season. She concentrated on four composers - Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
, Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
, Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
, Puccini
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
. 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 operas - such as "Verdi's Three Women", "Maria Malibran", "The Dream of Madame Butterfly".She also played in the movie "Odessa in fiammi (Odessa in flames)", in 1942, directed by Italian director Carmine Gallone
Carmine Gallone
Carmine Gallone was an early acclaimed Italian film director, screenwriter, and film producer. Considered one of Italian cinema's top early directors, he directed over 120 films in his fifty year career between 1913 and 1963.-Filmography:*Il bacio di Cirano *La donna nuda *Senza colpa! *Fior di...
(script by Nicolae Kiriţescu).
The movie is a Romanian-Italian co-production, about the drama of the refugees from Basarabia (Republic Moldova), in World War II. It brings homage to the Romanian troops, who free Basarabia from the Red Army, which occupied it in 1940. The movie wins the great prize at the Festival of Venice, in 1942. The movie shows also true images from contemporary newsreels, with the refugee columns running away.
Maria Cebotari plays the role of Maria Teodorescu, opera singer from Bessarabia, who was in Chisinau with her 8 years 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, in taverns, only to get her son back. Maria Teodorescu sing in those places, sharing pictures of hers. One such image is found by chance by her husband, who is in Romanian army with the rank of captain (he was in Bucharest at the time of the invasion). In the end the family reunites.
Unfortunately, the history of the movie was a sad one. Because of the invasion of Soviet troops in Bucharest in 1944, the movie becomes banned, along with many others, and the actors in the movie are taken into arrest. Many such movies were either destroyed or censored. Nothing was heard of this movie for more than 50 years. Luckily, someone re-discovered it in the Cinecitta
Cinecittà
Cinecittà is a large film studio in Rome that is considered the hub of Italian cinema.-History:The studios were founded in 1937 by Benito Mussolini and his head of cinema Luigi Freddi for propaganda purposes, under the slogan "Il cinema è l'arma più forte"...
archives in Rome, and it was shown for the first time 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
Controversy over linguistic and ethnic identity in Moldova
A controversy exists over the national identity and name of the native language of the main ethnic group in the Republic of Moldova. The issue more frequently disputed is whether Moldovans constitute a subgroup of Romanians or a separate ethnic group...
.
Recordings
Many of her surviving recordings are from live performances - either in the opera houses or in the studio for radio broadcast. They have now been almost all 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.
- 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/Ludwig, 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 (Friczay 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
- 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 NovotnáJarmila NovotnáJarmila Novotná was a celebrated Czech soprano and actress and, from 1940 to 1956, a star of the Metropolitan Opera.-Early career:...
and Esther RéthyEsther RéthyEsther Réthy was a Hungarian operatic soprano who had a major career in Europe from 1934 through 1968. She was notably a principal artist at the Vienna State Opera for over a decade and was a frequent performer at the Salzburg Festival. She performed a broad opera repertoire that encompassed...
), 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
External links
- Photographs and literature
- YouTube: Maria sings the aria Sempre Libera from "La traviata"-Verdi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAfrWDBHPMQ