[5] Cardinalli, performing as "AnnaMaria",[6][7] is a classical and flamenco guitarist, as well as an operatic contralto, noted by reviewers for both technical complexity and a feminine sensuality in her interpretive style.
[10] Operatic roles of note have included the First Norn in Wagner's Gotterdammerung at New York's Lincoln Center and La Zia Principessa in Puccini's Suor Angelica, which Cardinalli has performed frequently in the United States and Europe.
In 2015, examples included a filmed concert benefiting the preservation of San Miguel Mission, the oldest church in the U.S.,[12][13] which airs frequently on the global cable network EWTN (with a reach of 250 million homes in 140 countries), and a New York performance of Elgar's Sea Pictures, a rarely performed song cycle for contralto with Orchestra Amadeus to benefit the anti-human-trafficking efforts of Covenant House with homeless youth.
By 2017, she announced that all proceeds from her future musical endeavors will be donated to the charitable ends of a Catholic organization[14] which seeks to open a home for children at risk for exploitation[15] and works currently in outreach to the homeless.
[7][19] Independent of her more public musical career, Cardinalli's previous employers include the FBI and the Joint Special Operations Command, as well as the U.S. Marine Corps, working in Helmand Province, Afghanistan while serving on a Human Terrain Team.
Her investigation and subsequent report brought to light the prevalent sexual abuse of young boys,[22] and as Sara Carter described it in the Washington Examiner, the "vast gulf between U.S. and Afghan attitudes about homosexuality and pedophilia".
[23] Cardinalli asserts that the practice of abuse plays a role in the early development of terrorists and describes how child sex slaves are often trapped and hidden as young “recruits” to various police, military, and insurgent organizations in Afghanistan.
"[25] By 2011, international pressure, significantly fueled by the attention to Cardinalli’s report, led Afghanistan to enter into a historic agreement with the United Nations to “to stop the recruitment of children into its police forces and ban the common practice of boys being used as sex slaves by military commanders.” [26] While the sexuality issue was leaked, and is therefore the most publicized aspect of her investigative career, it is not indicative of its extent.
[citation needed] Cardinalli's academic biography, however, provides insight by mentioning her study of the religious and socio-cultural dynamics underlying conflict between Islamic and western cultures, and her previous use of the ethnographic research techniques required for Human Terrain work.
[30] In the 2018 EWTN program Enduring Legacy, which is hosted and features performances by Cardinalli, she refers to herself as a member of an Association of the Faithful seeking to become a Society of Apostolic Life in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe.