Tamara Cheban
Tamara Cheban, born Tamara Taratunskaya, was a Moldavian and Soviet singer, soprano, performer of Moldavian folk songs, and teacher. She was born on December 5, 1914, in the village of Berezlozhi, Orhei County, Bessarabia Governorate, Russian Empire, into a peasant family. After finishing a girls' lyceum in Chisinau in 1932, she completed training at a feldsher school in 1936–1938. She sang as a soprano in the bishops' choir of the Chisinau Cathedral under M. Berezovsky and took private vocal lessons with A. P. Antonovsky, A. Dicescu, and G. Afanasiu. From 1938 to 1940 she also studied music at the private Municipal Conservatory in Chisinau, and in 1940, while working as a nurse, she entered the Chisinau Conservatory.
During the war she was mobilized and went to Saratov, where she worked in a hospital and studied voice at the Saratov Conservatory from 1941 to 1944 with G. Ya. Belotserkovsky and A. M. Paskhalova. In those years she began her artistic career as a radio soloist in the city, sang in concerts, performed for military units and wounded soldiers, and started collaborating with the Ukrainian choral capella Dumka.
After returning to Chisinau following the liberation of the city, she resumed the musical education interrupted by the war with the support of D. G. Gershfeld, rector of the Chisinau Conservatory. In 1946 she graduated from the conservatory in the singing class of L. O. Babich. From 1945 to 1951 she sang in the Chisinau Opera Studio, directed by conductor B. S. Milyutin and organized at the conservatory by Gershfeld. She made her stage debut in 1946 as Cio-Cio-San in Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly; together with the role of Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, it became one of her finest achievements. During these same years she was also a soloist of Moldavian Radio.
In 1947, at the first World Festival of Youth and Students in Prague, she became a laureate and received a first-degree diploma for performances of songs that became calling cards of Moldova: Doina, Merioara, and Liana. From 1949 to 1973 she was a soloist with the folk-instrument orchestra of the song and dance ensemble Fluierash of the Moldavian Philharmonic, now the Sergey Lunkevich National Philharmonic. She maintained an active concert life, and her repertoire included more than 400 songs, among them Liana, Morishka, Lelitse Marie, songs of other peoples of the USSR, and works by Moldavian composers such as New Doina by E. K. Coca, Cintec de iubire / Cum sa-ti spun cu sufletul by V. A. Vilinchuk, Holiday Hora, and Caneciuie by D. E. Georgita.
Cheban also toured abroad in Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Austria, East Germany, Finland, Canada, Mongolia, and India. During her career she collaborated with musicians including Sergey Lunkevich, D. Fedov, G. Eshanu, and V. Polyakov. Many folk songs in her performance were preserved in the sound archives of National Radio.
From 1973 to 1985 she taught voice at the Gavriil Musicescu Chisinau Institute of Arts, now the Academy of Music, Theatre and Fine Arts, and from 1976 she served as an associate professor in the vocal department. She received the titles Honored Artist of the Moldavian SSR in 1949, People's Artist of the Moldavian SSR in 1953, and People's Artist of the USSR in 1960. She was also awarded the third-degree Stalin Prize in 1950 for performing Moldavian folk songs.
Tamara Cheban died on October 23, 1990, in Chisinau and was buried at the Central Armenian Cemetery. Her memory has been honored in Moldova through streets named after her in several cities, a commemorative postage stamp, a memorial plaque in Chisinau, a national competition for performers of folk song established in her honor, and a school and museum in her native village bearing her name.