Maria Carta

Maria Carta 24 June 1934 22 September 1994 was a Sardinian folk music singersongwriter She also performed in film and theatre In 1975 she wrote a book of poetry Canto rituale Ritual Song Throughout her 25year career she covered the richly diverse genres of traditional music of her native Sardinia Cantu a chiterra ninne nannechildrens lullabies gosos Gregorian chants and more often updating them with a modern and personal touch She succeeded in bringing Sardinian folk music into wider popular awareness in demonstrations at a national level in Italy like the Canzonissima in 1974 as well as internationally especially in France and the United States Maria Carta won the Miss Sardinia beauty contest in 1957 and later participated in the national Miss Italy competition Around 1960 she moved to Rome where she met the screenwriter Salvatore Laurani whom she later married She attended the Centro Nazionale di Studi di Musica Popolare directed by Diego Carpitella at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia and at the same time she pursued a musical and ethnographic research path with important productions and collaborations In 1971 she made two albums Sardegna canta and Paradiso in re and in the meantime she attended the ethnomusicologist Gavino Gabriel The same year RAI broadcast the television documentary Incontro con Maria Carta photography by Franco Pinna and texts by Velia Magno in which she sang and recited with Riccardo Cucciolla In 1972 she played at the Teatro Argentina in Rome in the Medea by Franco Enriquez The same year she met Amália Rodrigues with whom she held a concert at the Teatro Sistina In 1973 the two artists made a tour in Sardinia In 1974 she participated in Canzonissima interpreting the traditional Sardinian Ave Maria Deus ti salvet Maria She reached the final and was ranked second in the group of folk music with the song Amore disisperadu In 1975 she held an important concert at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow In 1976 she served as Communal Councilwoman for the Italian Communist Party in the city council of Rome and remained in office until 1981 In 1980 she participated in the Festival dAvignon in 1987 she performed in St Patricks Cathedral in New York City and in 1988 in St Marys Cathedral in San Francisco She caught the attention of such directors as Francis Ford Coppola who gave her the first of two of her widelyseen film roles as the mother of Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II 1974 and Franco Zeffirelli who cast her as Martha the sister of Lazarus in Jesus of Nazareth 1977 In 1985 she was awarded as songwriter the Targo Tenco for dialectalregional music In the last years of her life Carta gave her time to the University of Bologna where she conducted a series of classes and advised student theses on which she had relevant personal human experience and scholarly background In 1991 the President of Italy Francesco Cossiga named her a Commendatore della Repubblica Knight of the Republic similar to the British CBE Source Article Maria Carta from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30