Grammy® Award-winner Ana María Martínez's dramatic range distinguishes her as one of today's most sophisticated lyric sopranos. Her career spans the world's opera houses, concert halls, recording studios and movie theatres, and she continues to engage her audiences both with her signature roles and with new and exciting debuts on stage. 

Ms. Martínez will be heard on the opera stage during the 2011 - 12 season as Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia with Houston Grand Opera, as Amelia in Simon Boccanegra with the Los Angeles Opera and in a role debut as Alice Ford in Falstaff with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden.  She returns to the Puerto Rico Symphony for a gala performance, the Tchaikovsky Symphony in Moscow, to Carnegie Hall in a concert with the New York Women's Ensemble, and performs in concert with Plácido Domingo.  She joined Andrea Bocelli on tour and in a star-studded concert in New York’s Central Park for a performance that was broadcast on PBS stations and released on CD and DVD entitled "Concerto, One Night in Central Park."

At the start of the 2010-11 season Ms. Martínez returned to Houston Grand Opera, where she has portrayed some of her most beloved characters, to make a role debut as Cio-Cio San in Madama Butterfly in a new production by Tony Award winning director Michael Grandage.  The Houston Chronicle wrote of her performance “Breathtakingly beautiful to see and to hear, Martínez spans the title role's vast range with aplomb. The warmth and occasional smoky coloring of her voice, the graceful legato of her phrasing, the delicate precision of her pianissimo and her confident power at full strength—all seem ideally suited to charting Butterfly's emotional progression.”  While in Houston, Ms. Martínez was honored as the inaugural recipient of the Lynn Wyatt Great Artist Award, an award which is granted by the Houston Grand Opera and Lynn and Oscar Wyatt. 

Later on in the season she reprised the role of Cio-Cio San for a return engagement with Washington National Opera and she portrayed Mimi in La Bohème with Santa Fe Opera where she was praised for being an “affecting Mimì, projecting a rich, resonant, well-centered tone with a rosy bloom” (The New Mexican).  Numerous concert performances during the season included Lyric Opera of Chicago for a concert at Millenium Park, the Boris Lurie Art Foundation in New York City for the World Premiere of Marvin David Levy’s oratorio Atonement, the Washington National Opera for a concert with Bryn Terfel conducted by Plácido Domingo, and at the Teatro Real in Madrid, Spain, in a gala performance to celebrate Mr. Domingo’s birthday.  In addition, she joined both Plácido Domingo and Andrea Bocelli on concert tours in the U.S. and overseas.

During the 2009-10 season, Ms. Martínez made her astonishing role debut as Marguerite in Faust for a return engagement with Lyric Opera of Chicago, where she “revealed a soprano of uncommon warmth and evenness.  Young, attractive, and a compelling actress, Martínez would appear to be on the brink of major stardom” (Associated Press).  Additional performances on the opera stage included Liù in Turandot for a return engagement with De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam, and Mimi in La Bohème with both Opera de Puerto Rico and with the Abu Dhabi Festival in the United Arab Emirates, for the city’s first ever fully staged opera production.  She returned to her native Puerto Rico to join the Casals Festival, and she performed with the BBC Symphony at Barbican Hall and with the National Symphony of the Dominican Republic. She joined frequent collaborators Plácido Domingo and Andrea Bocelli on international tours that took her from cities across the United States, to Russia, Peru, and Columbia, and she returned to the Ravinia Festival in concert performances as Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte conducted by James Conlon.  This season also saw the release of the live recording of her critically acclaimed performance of Rusalka with the Glyndebourne Festival and London Philharmonic Orchestra on the Glyndebourne label.

The 2008-2009 season found Ms. Martínez singing the title role of Luisa Miller and the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro both with the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Nedda in I Pagliacci with the Houston Grand Opera, and Amelia in Simon Boccanegra with the San Francisco Opera.  House debuts during the season included Nedda in I Pagliacci with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Rosalinda in Die Fledermaus at Dallas Opera, and her headline making role and house debut as the title role in Rusalka at the Glyndebourne Festival.

Back on the concert stage she made her debut with the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra in Moscow, with the Filharmonica della Scala, under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel for her Teatro alla Scala debut, and with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in a concert conducted by Alan Gilbert in selections from West Side Story as part of a celebration of Leonard Bernstein.  She toured with both Plácido Domingo and Andrea Bocelli, and was a guest soloist at the Tuscan Sun Festival in Cortona, Italy. 

Highlights of her 2007-2008 season included performing the role of Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden.

Ms. Martínez also performed in concert with Plácido Domingo in Spain and Germany as well as at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago in addition to the Salzburg Festival, in an all-Zarzuela concert for TV entitled, "Amor, Vida de Mi Vida." She portrayed Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte with the Florida Grand Opera and returned to the Opera de Bastille in Paris to sing the title role in a new production of Verdi's Luisa Miller under the baton of Massimo Zanetti; singing the role of Mimi in La Bohème with the Houston Grand Opera conducted by Patrick Summers; a debut with the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg for her first Verdi Requiem conducted by Sylvan Cambreling; and a debut with the Orchestre de Paris to sing Bernstein's “Kaddish” Symphony. She also returned to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel to sing Villa-Lobos and selected Spanish and Latin American repertoire.

Highlights of the 2005-06 season included the role of Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni at Houston Grand Opera and as Micaëla in Carmen at San Francisco Opera as well as her debut as Nedda in I Pagliacci at the Netherlands Opera and her Metropolitan Opera debut as Micaëla in Carmen. She also returned to Covent Garden as Violetta in La Traviata, her role debut as la Contessa in Le Nozze di Figaro at the Houston Grand Opera, and her debut at Paris Opera Bastille as Amelia in a new production of Simon Boccanegra.

In the 2004-05 season, Ms. Martínez created the role of Lucero in the world premiere of Daniel Catán’s Salsipuedes with the Houston Grand Opera and performed with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center.  Other highlights of the season included performances of Mimì in La Bohème with the Los Angeles Opera and a return to Houston for a revival production of Roméo et Juliette.  The summer festival season found Ms. Martínez at the Santa Fe Opera in another role debut, singing Rosina in a new production of Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia.

Ms. Martínez's previous season included several critically acclaimed debuts: at the Santa Fe Opera as Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, at the Dresden Semper Opera as Mimì in La Bohème and at the San Francisco Opera as Pamina in the Die Zauberflöte, a role she has sung with the Vienna Staatsoper, Seattle, Bonn and Stuttgart operas. She returned to the Deutsche Oper Berlin to perform Mimì in La Bohème as well as Violetta in their season's production of La Traviata. Ms. Martínez also returned to Houston as Liù in Turandot and in the same role at the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico. The festival season found Ms. Martínez returning to Santa Fe Opera as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni.

Other highlights were her Hamburg Opera debut as Blanche in Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites, her Violetta conducted by Plácido Domingo at the Los Angeles Opera; her Deutsche Oper Berlin debut in Götz Friedrich's production of Luisa Miller; her debut at the Vienna Staatsoper as Adina in L'elisir d'amore, and her acclaimed performance of Mélisande in a Dieter Dorn production at the Florence Maggio Musicale Festival under Giuseppe Sinopoli. Ms. Martínez also performed with the Boston Symphony conducted by Bernard Haitink in both Boston and Carnegie Hall and toured the world and appeared at the White House with Plácido Domingo and with Andrea Bocelli in concert. Other past engagements include performing at the Richard Tucker Gala in New York's Avery Fisher Hall conducted by Julius Rudel, as well as performances at Bonn, Montpellier, Stuttgart, Vienna, Los Angeles, New York City Opera, Minnesota, Seattle, and Washington Opera. 

Released to critical acclaim is her recorded solo effort, simply titled Ana María Martínez - Soprano Songs and Arias, recorded with the Prague Philharmonia conducted by Steven Mercurio on Naxos. She stars on the Decca DVD Così fan tutte filmed at the Salzburg Festival and performs the role of Nedda opposite Andrea Bocelli in the Universal CD recording of I Pagliacci which debuted at #1. DVDs on the Euro Arts label include Spanish Night with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Plácido Domingo, and Amor, Vida de Mi Vida where she joins Plácido Domingo for Zarzuelas recorded live with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg.  In addition, her discography includes a performance on Steven Mercurio’s Sony Classical CD, Many Voices, and the Latin Grammy award-winning recording of Albeniz's Merlin with Plácido Domingo (Decca), which coincided with the Grammy nominated recording of Bacalov's Misa Tango with Plácido Domingo (Deutsche Grammophon). Additional recordings include Glass' La Belle et la Bête and Symphony No. 5 (Nonesuch), Albeniz's Henry Clifford (Decca), Joaquin Rodrigo’s: Obra Vocal I, II, IV & V (EMI), and Daniel Catán's Florencia en el Amazonas (Albany). Recorded on Naxos for the Milken Archives and with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, she can be heard on Castelnuovo Tedesco’s Naomi & Ruth Opus 27 (Naxos) as well as Yizkor's Requiem (Naxos) and with the Barcelona Symphony, Marvin Levy’s Canto de los Marranos (Naxos), Julius Chajes’ Old Jerusalem (Naxos) and Hugo Weisgall's Psalm of the Distant Dove (Naxos).  Her rendition of “Ave María” is heard in the Denzel Washington film “John Q” and she has been featured on the Emmy nominated PBS TV special and DVD American Dream: Andrea Bocelli’s Statue of Liberty Concert with the New Jersey Symphony.
                 
A graduate of the Juilliard School with Bachelor and Master of Music degrees and an alumna of the Houston Grand Opera Studio, Ms. Martínez won the Pepita Embil Award at the 1995 Operalia II, first prize in the 1994 Eleanor McCollum Auditions and Awards from Houston Grand Opera, and in the 1993 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions she was a first place district and first place regional winner and national finalist. Ms. Martínez offers candid encouragement to young singers as a contributing editor to Classical Singer Magazine. Ms. Martínez is the recipient of the National Association of Latina Leaders’ Groundbreaking Latina in Music award. Her recollections and reflections are profiled in Latino Wisdom: Celebrity Stories of Hope, Inspiration, and Success to Recharge our Mind, Body, and Soul by Cathy Areu, published by Barricade Books.