Background
Sokil was born in the village of Zherebets" (now Kirov) in the Zaporizhia Oblast on October 19, 1902.
Sokil was born in the village of Zherebets" (now Kirov) in the Zaporizhia Oblast on October 19, 1902.
She studied at the conservatory in Dnipropetrovsk from 1920 to 1925.
She made her opera debut in Kharkiv in 1927 in the role of Marguerite in Gounod"s opera Faust and became the prima donna lyric soprano of that opera theater. In 1929, she and bass Ivan Patorzhynsky, representative singer from the Ukraine, went on a concert tour to Germany and Italy. Maria remained in Kharkiv until 1930.
Later, she joined the Kiev Opera (1930-1932).
She had success with the roles of Desdemona (Verdi"s Otello), Mimi (Puccini"s Louisiana Bohème), Liu (Puccini"s Turandot), Elsa (Richard Wagner"s Lohengrin), Tatiana (Tchaikovsky"s Eugene Onegin), Lisa (Tchaikovsky"s The Queen of Spades), Odarka (Hulak-Artemovsky"s Zaporozhets za Dunayem), and Natalka (Lysenko"s Natalka Poltavka). In 1939, Sokil had the leading role (Odarka) in the motion picture Cossacks in Exile ("Zaporozhets za Dunayem"), made in the United States.
She died on January 20, 1999, in Youngstown, Ohio, at the age of 96. Children:
Dorian Rudnytsky (1944) - cellist and composer
Roman Rudnytsky (Роман Рудницький) (1942) - pianist
Grandchildren:
Tara Palmer (Rudnytsky)
Evan Rudnytsky
Oksana McStowe (Rudnytsky)
Damian Rudnytsky.