Throughout her 25-year career she covered the richly diverse genres of traditional music of her native Sardinia (Cantu a chiterra, ninne nanne—children's lullabies, gosos, Gregorian chants, and more), often updating them with a modern and personal touch.

[1] She succeeded in bringing Sardinian folk music into wider popular awareness in demonstrations at a national level in Italy (like the Canzonissima in 1974) as well as internationally (especially in France and the United States).

The same year RAI broadcast the television documentary Incontro con Maria Carta (photography by Franco Pinna and texts by Velia Magno), in which she sang and recited with Riccardo Cucciolla.

She caught the attention of such directors as Francis Ford Coppola – who gave her the first of two of her widely-seen film roles as the mother of Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II (1974) – and Franco Zeffirelli, who cast her as Martha, the sister of Lazarus, in Jesus of Nazareth (1977).

In the last years of her life, Carta gave her time to the University of Bologna where she conducted a series of classes and advised student theses on which she had relevant personal, human experience and scholarly background.