Careers:
Ana Maria Martinez,
Opera
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.
It comes as a surprise to learn
that this “beautiful
woman with the fascinating voice,” as the London Times
referred to her recently, “one of the most sophisticated
of lyric sopranos singing today,” is just this month
making her debut at the Metropolitan Opera. Perhaps one reason
lies in scheduling—Ana Maria Martinez, the lady with
the “velvety mezzoish half-tints in the mid and bottom
range” and “gleaming top” notes, has been
making debuts all over the country and in Europe, wowing audiences
with her sound. Nonetheless, the Met is the Met—is she
at all intimidated by doing Micaela in Carmen on that big,
big stage, with only three days of rehearsal? She pauses, a
modest laugh, an honest answer—not really. She knows
the stage, having been a finalist in the 1993 Metropolitan
Opera National Guild Council auditions. It’s actually “a
warm and cozy feeling” to be up there, she says, it looks
smaller from that point of view, but “just don’t
look up,” a friend had suggested, or “you’ll
be saying, Oh my God!” She’s been on other stages,
of course, all over the world, including Broadway, appearing
at 19 as a Kit-cat girl in Cabaret singing “Money Makes
the World Go Round.”
For Ana Maria Martinez, however,
it’s music that makes
the world go round, a passion she felt she was born to pursue
as early as five, when she started to play piano and discovered
she could play by ear. To her regret, however, she was not
pressured to take lessons in theory. Though she holds a B.A.
and M.A. in music from Juilliard, she had to learn ear training
and sight-reading fast. Of course, conservatory training is
a must for any serious musician but so is a well-rounded education,
which includes the sciences as well as the humanities. So many
operas, she points out, have their origin in great literature
(though there is no Micaela in Prosper Merimee’s novella,
Carmen). She notes that Juilliard now has an arrangement whereby
students who qualify can take courses at Columbia, and Columbia
undergraduates can audition for Julliard. She is particularly
pleased with this program because this curricular diversity
builds on the demographic diversity of the student body at
Julliard. And so, when she talks to high school students thinking
about careers in music, she urges them to go for a bachelor’s
degree at a university with an excellent music program, not
avoid discipline but at the same time not specialize to the
extent of avoiding social skills. At 15 or 16, the voice is
still too unformed, she tells them, and thoughts about life
commitments premature. She also cautions those in their twenties,
when the voice matures, not to let competition drive them too
hard, especially if they want to be singing into their fifties
and sixties.
Her interests have been wide and
varied. Though she has always loved opera and has been singing
with the likes of Plácido
Domingo and Andrea Bocelli (a CD she made with Domingo in 2001
won the Latin Grammy Award for best classical recording), she
also adores Latin music, particularly mambo. And there was
even a time she thought of becoming an astronaut! She has been
quoted as having observed that November 19 is not just the
date of her Met debut but also the anniversary of the discovery
of Puerto Rico, her birthplace—her mother is Puerto Rican,
her father, Cuban. Her mother, she notes, has already announced
she will be attending three performances of Carmen. Mature
now in gauging her voice, Ana Maria Martinez has increasingly
turned her attention to dramatic interpretation. Micaela, a
small-town peasant girl, in love with Don Jose who leaves her
for Carmen, is not the sweet, frail reed she is often made
out to be. She goes to great lengths to find her prodigal lover
and despite her romantic naiveté is a strong woman—she
has “chutzpah” in confronting him, and her determination
can be heard in the music, especially in her aria with its
long sure legato line that she will undertake to make sound
like “melted butter.”
On November 8th fans will be able to hear her on a new CD:
Ana Maria Martinez: Songs and Arias, and be grateful that thoughts
of space flight never trumped those for the operatic stage.
Besides, she got to meet a female astronaut recently when she
and Bocelli, doing a concert in Houston, were given a VIP backstage
tour of NASA. In the meantime, music lovers should get ready
for her Met launch on November 19th.#
