Karita Mattila

Finnish soprano Karita Mattila is one of the most sought-after singers of our time. She started the 2021/22 season with her triumphant return to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as the Kostelnička in Claus Guth’s new production of Jenůfa under Henrik Nánási, additionally making her role debut as Elle in La Voix humaine at the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki and as the Older Woman in Jonathan Dove’s Flight at the Dallas Opera. On the concert platform she sang Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death for the first time with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and together with the Kuopio Symphony Orchestra under Jaakko Kuusisto performed a set of Sibelius songs specially arranged for her.

Other recent engagements have included Kabanicha (Káťa Kabanová) at the Berlin State Opera, Ortrud (Lohengrin) under Lothar Koenigs at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Leokadja Begbick (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny) under Esa-Pekka Salonen at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, the Foreign Princess (Rusalka) under Susanne Mälkki at the Paris Opéra and Madame de Croissy in a live relay of Dialogues des Carmélites broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera in New York and conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Other roles that Karita Mattila has sung in the course of her distinguished career include Emilia Marty (The Makropulos Case) for the San Francisco Opera, at the Met, for the Finnish National Opera and at the BBC Proms, Sieglinde (Die Walküre) for Houston Grand Opera and the San Francisco Opera, Marie (Wozzeck) at Covent Garden and the title role in Ariadne auf Naxos at the Bavarian State Opera. She made her role debut as Kundry (Parsifal) in a concert performance at the Turku Music Festival in 2017

Two of her opera recordings have received a Grammy Award in the category of Best Opera Recording: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, in which she sang Eva under Georg Solti in 1998, and Jenůfa, in which she sang the title role under Bernard Haitink in 2004. Her other recordings include Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder under Claudio Abbado, Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder and Shostakovich’s Fourteenth Symphony under Simon Rattle and the concert that she gave in front of an audience of 12,000 in Helsinki to mark her 40th birthday.

Karita Mattila regularly champions contemporary works and has taken part in several world premieres, including three pieces by Kaija Saariaho: Quatre Instants, Mirage and the monodrama Emilie, which was first performed to great acclaim at the Opéra National de Lyon. She has received numerous prizes and awards, including the Order of the Lion of Finland in 2020.