Maria Cebotari (original name: Ciubotaru, 10 February 1910 – 9 June 1949) was a celebrated Bessarabian-born Romanian and Austrian soprano and actress, Germany’s most lavish opera and singing stars in the 1930s and 1940s. Beniamino Gigli considered Cebotari 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. Cebotari was born at Chisinau, in Bessarabia, and studied singing at the Chisinau 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. From then on, she appeared at many great opera houses, including Vienna State Opera and La Scala Opera House of Milan. Besides her successful career at the opera houses, Cebotari appeared in several films related to opera—such as “Verdi’s Three Women,” “Maria Malibran,” “The Dream of Madame Butterfly.” Her funeral was “one of the most imposing demonstrations of love and honored any deceased artist has ever received” in the history of Vienna, with thousands of people attending.