Ana María Martínez would love to one day sleep a total of eight hours, wake up and have a cup of coffee and maybe a run.
But life as an opera star doesn’t allow that.
This weekend, the critically-acclaimed soprano is on stage at home with the Houston Grand Opera singing the title role of Daniel Catán’s “Florencia en el Amazonas.”
In February she’s off to Estonia and Lithuania for arena dates with Placido Domingo, with whom she will star in May in Los Angeles Opera’s production of Manuel Penella’s “El Gato Montés.”
The only break she gets — a working break really — is her trip on Tuesday, Feb. 5, to Tucson, where she and pianist Craig Terry will perform a recital of all-Spanish songs at University of Arizona’s Crowder Hall to close out the 2019 Tucson Desert Song Festival.
Sleeping in?
Not happening.
“Those eight hours have not been possible for a long time, and that’s OK,” the mother of a middle-school son said, adding that she relishes her life on stage and off. “It’s a happy full life, with not a lot of sleep. But I say it with a smile; I wished for all of it and I say thank you.”
This is the first time Martínez will perform in Tucson, and she comes here with a program that explores Spanish music from Spain to the Caribbean.
The Puerto Rico native was finalizing her program when we caught up with her by phone at home in Houston, where she has lived since 2002. But she said her concert will be a primer for the audience on the full range of Spanish music. Here’s what she had to say about the program and a few other things you might want to know about her before Tuesday.
- The repertoire: “We like to spend the first part concentrating on Spain. And in the second part, we choose repertoire from different Spanish-speaking countries. It’s very special. You should get a little taste of Spain and the Caribbean and a little South America, too,” she said.
- Big city girl in the heart of Texas: “It’s a great city. I was raised in New York and I went to school at Juilliard for my undergrad and graduate degrees. And after some competitions and auditions, I was invited to be a member of the young artist program in the Houston Grand Opera. So that started my relationship with the company. And once I finished that program, I started my career and as most young singers find out, you are hopping from one gig to the next. I always loved New York but I realized I was hardly spending any time there; I was mostly on the road. And I am a kind of quiet person. When I have some downtime, I want to be in a nice place that has some peace and quiet but is still a major cosmopolitan city ... and with a strong Spanish community. I thought, ‘Well, there you go. It’s Houston’.”
- Advice for young singers: Martínez’s repertoire runs the gamut from Manon in Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte,” the countess in “The Marriage of Figaro,” Liu in Puccini’s “Turandot,” Cio Cio San in “Madama Butterfly” and Mimi in “La Boheme.” She started her career with light lyric and coloratura roles then moved to the full lyric repertoire. “Some of the ladies I interpret now would fall into the lirico-spinto repertoire. So that’s really neat to be able to kind of graduate, so to speak, to other repertoires,” said Martínez, 48. “And definitely important to keep the voice as fresh and as young as it can be, and one of the ways to do that is to always sing on the lighter side of what you can sing at the moment instead of stretching it to where you think it’s going to go. That’s the quickest way to tire your instrument.”
