Maria Cebotari, called „one of the miracles of the world” by the interwar press, was born on February 10, 1910 in Chișinău, in Bessarabia, where she attended singing classes at the Conservatory. In 1929, she became an actress with the Moscow Art Theater Company and married the company’s financier, Count Alexander Virubov, then moved to Berlin to take singing lessons with Professor Oscar Daniel.
In 1935, the soprano sang the role of Aminta in the world premiere of Richard Strauss's The Silent Woman, and the composer advised her to move permanently to Berlin, so a year later she joined the German State Opera, where she was a prima donna for ten years. During that time, she was cast as Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro, Zerlina in Don Giovanni and Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier, also appearing in performances by the Dresden Opera Company and Covent Garden in London, as well as at the Vienna State Opera and La Scala in Milan.
Maria Cebotari sang under the baton of the greatest conductors of the era, among those who appreciated her being Arturo Toscanini, Fritz Bush, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Clemens Krauss and Karl Böhm. There are still some exceptional recordings from those years in the archives that have been remastered and can be heard today by those interested.
In 1938, the soprano divorced Count Virubov and remarried the Austrian actor Gustav Diessl, with whom she had two sons, and in 1946, after the war, she joined the Vienna State Opera. She returned to the Covent Garden stage in 1947, and on September 27 she appeared in the role of Donna Anna in Richard Tauber's opera „Ottavio”, the performance taking place less than a week before she underwent surgery during which her left lung, affected by cancer, was removed.
A few months later, on March 20, 1948, her husband, the actor Gustav Diessl, died of a heart attack, and the actress suffered a shock. Although it seemed that the cancer surgery was successful, Maria Cebotari began to experience severe pain while she was on stage at the Milan Opera House in early 1949, during the performance of “The Marriage of Figaro”. At first, the doctors did not take her seriously, but on March 31, the soprano collapsed in front of the audience watching her at the Vienna Opera in “The Beggar Student”, a work by Karl Millöcker. After four days, she underwent emergency surgery, and the doctors discovered that both her pancreas and liver were affected by metastases of the ruthless disease. The great artist died on June 9, 1949, at only 39 years old, her two children now orphaned by both parents. The funeral, attended by thousands of people, took place at the Döbling Cemetery and was “one of the most imposing demonstrations of love and honor that any deceased artist has ever received in the history of Vienna,” as Professor Stefan Zadejan noted.
In 1958, the soprano’s good friend, the British pianist Sir Clifford Curzon, and his wife, Lucille, decided to adopt, after a long administrative process, her sons, Peter and Fritz, about whom the press wrote at the time that they were „the most famous orphans of the century.”
In addition to her successful career, which included performances on the stages of the largest opera houses in Europe, Maria Cebotari also appeared in several films whose subject matter was, in one way or another, related to the world of opera, including „Giuseppe Verdi,” „Maria Malibran,” „Madama Butterfly,” and „Love Me, Alfredo!”.
She also starred in the film „Odessa in Flames”, made in 1942 by the Italian director Carmine Gallone, based on a script by Nicolae Kirițescu. A Romanian-Italian co-production, the film was about the Battle of Odessa and won the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival that year.
Maria Cebotari, called „one of the miracles of the world” by the interwar press, was born on February 10, 1910 in Chișinău, in Bessarabia, where she attended singing classes at the Conservatory. In 1929, she became an actress with the Moscow Art Theater Company and married the troupe’s financier, Count Alexander Virubov, then moved to Berlin to take singing lessons with Professor Oscar Daniel.
In 1931, she made her debut on the Dresden opera stage playing the role of Mimi in Giacomo Puccini's opera „La Boheme" and shortly afterwards Bruno Walter invited her to participate in the Salzburg Festival, where she received the role of Euridice in Christoph Willibald Gluck's opera, „Orpheus and Eurydice".
In Vienna, Austria, there is a street/alley named after Maria Cebotari, but the official name is not „Maria Cebotari Street" (in German „Maria Cebotari Straße"), but:
📍 Cebotariweg – Vienna (Döbling)
This is a street/alley located in the Döbling district of Vienna (north of the city, postal code 1190, Nussdorf area).
The name „Cebotariweg" was given in 1958 in honor of the internationally renowned soprano Maria Cebotari (1910–1949).
Maria Cebotari was a famous lyric-dramatic soprano, a member of the Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera) in the last years of her life and remained a symbol of lyrical art in the first half of the 20th century.
She is buried in the Döbling Cemetery in Vienna, also in the same district, and this street/alley name marks the recognition of her cultural contribution to the city.
📌 What to know if you want to find this street
Cebotariweg is not one of the largest arteries in Vienna — it is a smaller street/alley in the Nussdorf (Döbling) neighborhood.
The exact address is not a central artery like the „Ringstrasse" or „Mariahilfer Straße", but it carries the honorary significance in memory of the artist.
The source: dosaresecrete.ro and wikipedia.org
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