Maria began her singing studies in her hometown Sabadell with Mª Teresa Boix and graduated in singing and lied from the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC) with the highest honors, plus the Extraordinary Honors Award for her final degree project. In 2007 her interpretation in El dúo de La Africana directed by Xavier Albertí at Barcelona’s Teatre Lliure season deserved a nomination for Best Musical Actress and won the Critics’ Prize in the Butaca Awards. She received further recognition in 2011 when was again nominated as Best Musical Actress in the Butaca Awards for her work in the Carte Blanche to Lluïsa Cunillé.
Maria has sung in many of the most prestigious opera houses and concert halls in Europe and America, among them Musikverein and Theater an der Wien, Arena di Verona, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Opera Philadelphia; Teatre del Liceu, Auditori, and Palau de la Música in Barcelona; Palau de la Música and Palau de les Arts in Valencia; Teatro Real and Auditorio Nacional in Madrid; Granada International Festival, Salle Gaveau in Paris, and at the opera houses in Lausanne, Montpellier, Vichy, and Frankfurt. She frequently collaborates with renowned early music ensembles and orchestras under noted conductors such as Pablo Heras Casado, Gabriel Garrido, Giovanni Antonini, Enrico Onofri, Ottavio Dantone, Stefano Montanari, Rinaldo Alessandrini, Fabio Biondi, Erich Hoebarth, Sir Neville Marriner, Ivor Bolton, Corrado Rovaris, Josep Pons, Francesc Prat, Eduardo López Banzo, Pablo González, Kenneth Weiss, and Martin Gester.
She has worked with stage directors Xavier Albertí, Francisco Negrín, Robert Carsen, Kasper Holten, Lluís Pasqual, Lluïsa Cunillé, Rita Cosentino, Luís de Tavira, Cisco Aznar, Juliette Deschamps, Adrián Schvarzstein, and Alfred Kirchner and with theatre companies La Fura dels Baus and Els Comediants.
Highlights from her recording career are the opera Gli amori d’Apollo e di Dafne by Cavalli under Gabriel Garrido, the CD Peter Phillips: un inglés en la Flandes española with Cappella Mediterranea, the oratorio Juditha Triumphans by Vivaldi under Ottavio Dantone, and baroque zarzuelas La fontana del placer by J. Castel, Clementina by Boccherini and l’isola disabitata by G. Bonno conducted by Pablo Heras Casado (all three for Harmonia Mundi); a DVD recording of Pergolesi’s La Salustia for ArtHaus Musik; three CDs with Orquesta Barroca de Sevilla, two of them under Enrico Onofri and the other under Vanni Moretto, plus a number of radio recordings for RNE, BBC Radio, Radio France and ORF. Maria has also recorded several works by contemporary Catalan composers Agustí Charles, Eduard Resina, Francesc Martí and Joan Guinjoan.
Among her recent engagements we find Boccherini’s Stabat Mater with Concentus Musicus Wien at Vienna’s Musikverein and with Quatuor Mosaïques at Eszterháza Palace, the role of Dorella in Wagner’s Das Liebesverbot both in Madrid and Buenos Aires; the leading role in a zarzuela production for Teatre Nacional de Catalunya and Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang with OBC under Kazushi Ono in Barcelona; two French tours of Beethoven’s Folksongs with Les Musiciens du Louvre under Francesco Corti, and two recordings with Cappella Mediterranea/Leonardo García Alarcón and Orquesta Barroca de Sevilla under Onofri. Her future appearances include the role of Margarita Xirgu in Golijov’s Ainadamar at Cesis Festival, Latvia; Monteverdi’s Vespers at CCB in Lisbon, Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona on tour in Bulgaria and Romania; Kitty Hart in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking in Madrid and at the Barbican in London, and the leading role la Mujer in zarzuela Policías y ladrones by Tomás Marco in a world premiere at Madrid’s Teatro de la Zarzuela on April 2018.
Maria’s artistic goal is to always offer accurate and attentive performances in any different vocal style, from the historical birth of music to our present ever respecting the composers, their times, techniques and unique styles.