Maria Cebotari is a well-known Austrian singer of Moldavian origin, a brilliant representative of the German vocal school, who had the illustrious soprano. She became famous and achieved particular success in performing the repertoire of V.A. Mozart, in the operatic voice parts of Susanna and Countess Rosina in The Marriage of Figaro, Zerlina and Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, as well as Violetta in La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi and Cio-Cio-san in Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini.

From her childhood, Maria sang in the choir directed by Maxim Berezovsky in her native town Chișinău. In 1924, she entered the conservatory there. After graduating, she toured with the Prague group of the Moscow Art Theater. In 1929, she went to study in Berlin. After 2 years, she made her debut in the role of Mimi from the opera La Bohème on the Dresden stage, as well as at the Salzburg Festival in the opera Orpheus and Eurydice by Gluck.

Maria Cebotari gave concerts in Europe - Great Britain, Italy, Sweden, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark and others. She had the cinematic experience as well - she starred in several films, including the Romanian-Italian propaganda movie "Odessa on Fire" about the "liberation" of Odessa by Romanian troops in 1941.

An interesting fact is that the streets in Dresden and Vienna, where she gave concerts more than once, as well as the street in her native town Chișinău, are named after Maria Cebotari. Besides, a postage stamp with her portrait was issued in Moldova.

For the anniversary of the singer, we have prepared a musical selection of recitatives and arias from the opera “The Marriage of Figaro” by V.A. Mozart, in which she performed the part of Countess Rosina, recorded from a gramophone record stored in the music library of the museum Collection. The selection is digitized from His Master’s Voice record on Audio-technica vinyl player.