Tuuli Takala
The Finnish soprano Tuuli Takala was born in Helsinki and studied singing, violin and music pedagogy at the Sibelius Academy in her home city. She made her professional opera debut in 2013 as the Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflöte) at the Finnish National Opera, where she returned in 2014 as Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro) and in 2021 as Violetta (La traviata).
Since 2015 she has been an ensemble member of the Semperoper Dresden, where she has appeared in roles such as Lucia (Lucia di Lammermoor), Gilda (Rigoletto), Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), Micaëla (Carmen), Sophie (Der Rosenkavalier), Blonde (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Marzelline (Fidelio), the Queen of the Night and Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Susanna, the Woodbird (Siegfried), Olympia (Les Contes d’Hoffmann), Contessa di Folleville (Il viaggio a Reims), Female Italian Singer (Capriccio), Echo (Ariadne auf Naxos) and Valencienne (Die lustige Witwe).
In the 2023/24 season she made her role debut at the Semperoper as Adina (L’elisir d’amore) and sang Lucia, Pamina and Teresa in a new production of Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini. She also made guest appearances as Mimì (La bohème) at the Opéra-Théâtre de Metz, as Blanche (Dialogues des Carmélites) at the Finnish National Opera and as Lucia at the Hamburg State Opera.
Recent engagements have also included Konstanze (Die Entführung aus dem Serail) in Hamburg, Violetta in Metz, Donna Anna (Don Giovanni) at the Zurich Opera House, Pamina, Gilda (Rigoletto), Marguerite (Faust) and Zerlina (Don Giovanni) at the Savonlinna Opera Festival and Pamina and Amanda Rossi in the world premiere of Olli Kortekangas’s Veljeni vartija at the Tampere Opera. She appeared at the Bayreuth Festival in 2021 as Flowermaiden (Parsifal) and in 2022 as Shepherd Boy (Tannhäuser).
She has sung the Queen of the Night at all three Berlin opera houses, at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Vienna Volksoper, the Aalto-Musiktheater in Essen and at the Opéra de Toulon.
On the concert platform Tuuli Takala has sung in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, in the world premiere of Olli Kortekangas’s song cycle Songs of Meena with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, in Orff’s Carmina Burana with Sinfonia Lahti, in Mahler’s Eighth Symphony with the NDR Radio Philharmonie, in Mahler’s Second Symphony with the Orquestra Gulbenkian and in the 2017 Advent Concert of ZDF in the Frauenkirche in Dresden under Christian Thielemann. As a recitalist she has appeared in venues in Finland, London, Vienna and Tokyo.
Tuuli Takala has been awarded numerous prizes, including first prize at the Timo Mustakallio Singing Competition and at the Kangasniemi Singing Competition. In 2018 she was awarded the Curt Taucher Sponsorship Prize.