Maria Carta

Throughout her career Carta covered a number of genres of traditional music of her native Sardinia (cantu a chiterra, ninne nanne—children's lullabies, gosos, Gregorian chants, and more), often reinterpreting them in more modernized and personal ways. She brought Sardinian folk music into wider popular awareness in demonstrations at a national level in Italy (like the Canzonissima in 1974) as well as internationally, mainly in France and the United States.

The recorded working language is Sardinian. The field of work recorded is poetry. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are folk music. Residence is recorded at Rome. Distinctions recorded are Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

• Name — Maria Carta • Honorific Suffix — OMRI • Born — 24 June 1934 • Birthplace — Siligo, Sardinia, Italy • Died — 22 September 1994 • Place of death — Rome, Italy • Genre — * Pop • folk • musica leggera • Occupation — * Singer • actress • Years Active — 1970–1994 • Label — * RCA Records • Polydor Records • BMG Ricordi • Fonit Cetra • Le Chant du Monde • Music of the World • Website — Fondazione Maria Carta

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 d'Avignon; in 1987 she performed in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City; and in 1988 in St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco. She caught the attention of such directors as Francis Ford Coppola – who gave her the first of two of her widely-seen 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 dialectal/regional 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.

Maria Carta gave her last concert in Toulouse, France, on 30 June 1994. Ill with cancer, she died at her home in Rome on 22 September 1994, aged 60.

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • The Godfather Part II — 1974 — Vito Corleone's mother — by Francis Ford Coppola • Cecilia – Storia di una comune anarchica — 1975 — Olimpia — by Jean-Louis Comolli • Cadaveri eccellenti — 1976 — Signora Cres — by Francesco Rosi • Jesus of Nazareth — 1977 — Martha — by Franco Zeffirelli TV Mini-series • Un reietto delle isole — 1980 — Based on by Joseph Conrad's novel An Outcast of the Islands by Giorgio Moser TV Movie • Derborence — 1985 — Singer • The Professor — 1986 — The mother — by Giuseppe Tornatore • Disamistade — 1988 — "Madre Di Sebastiano" — by Gianfranco Cabiddu • Il commissario Corso — 1992 — telefilm • Il respiro della valle — 1992 — (final film role)

Maria Carta is recorded as having received Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.