“Karita Mattila is an artist who confounds expectations… She has a voice that is most often described in terms reserved for varieties of light – radiant, luminous, incandescent, shining. The same adjectives apply to the lady herself, whose artistry and integrity literally seem to brighten whatever she sings.”
Paul Driscoll, Opera News, March 2012
Karita Mattila is one of today’s most exciting lyric dramatic sopranos. She is recognised as much for the beauty and versatility of her voice as for her extraordinary stage ability. A native of Finland, Mattila was trained at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, where her teacher was Liisa Linko-Malmio, and subsequently she studied with Vera Rozsa for nearly 20 years. She sings at all the world’s major opera houses and festivals, and has performed with the world’s greatest conductors including Levine, Abbado, Davis, Dohnanyi, Haitink, Pappano, Rattle, Salonen and Sawallisch. Her operatic repertoire encompasses works by Beethoven, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner and Janáček.
Mattila’s innate sense of drama has led to remarkable collaborations with major stage directors, including Luc Bondy in his highly acclaimed Don Carlos, which she performed in Paris, London and at the Edinburgh Festival; Lev Dodin in his productions of Elektra for the Salzburg Easter Festival and Pique Dame and Salome at the Opéra National de Paris; Peter Stein for his Simon Boccanegra in Salzburg and Don Giovanni in Chicago; and Jürgen Flimm for his Fidelio at the Metropolitan Opera. She is an influential artistic force in the development of new music, regularly collaborating with eminent contemporary composers in the debut performances of significant modern works. Recent performances in this genre include the world premiere of Emilie de Chatelet by Kaija Saariaho at the Opéra National de Lyon. She has won numerous awards throughout her distinguished career, including Musical America’s Musician of the Year (one of the most prestigious honours paid to classical artists in the USA) and the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (one of France’s highest cultural honours).
Karita Mattila has many recordings to her credit on the Phillips, EMI, Sony, DG, and Ondine labels. Her 40th birthday concert, in front of nearly 12,000 people in Helsinki, was released on CD by Ondine. Other recordings include Strauss’s Vier letzte lieder with Claudio Abbado on the DG label; arias and scenes from the operas of Puccini, Verdi, Janáček, Tchaikovsky, Wagner and R. Strauss; German Romantic arias by Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Weber with Sir Colin Davis; Grieg and Sibelius songs with Sakari Oramo (all on Erato/Warner); complete recordings of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg on Decca with the late Sir Georg Solti, which won a Grammy Award in 1998; Jenůfa on Erato/Warner with Bernard Haitink, which won a Grammy Award in 2004; and Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 14 with Sir Simon Rattle on EMI.
Recent highlights include Leonore Fidelio for Houston Grand Opera, Emilia Marty The Makropoulos Case at the Metropolitan Opera, the title role of Janáček’s Katya Kabanova at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Lisa Pique Dame at the Metropolitan Opera, The Makropoulos Case at San Francisco Opera, concert appearances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the Berlin Philharmonic with Sir Simon Rattle, and recitals at the Edinburgh International Festival and the Carnegie Hall, New York.
Highlights of the 2012-13 season include Emilia Marty The Makropoulos Case at Finnish National Opera; the title role of Jenufa at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich; Strauss's Four Last Songs with the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon; concerts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra; and recitals in London, Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Zurich, Paris, Minneapolis and Boston. Future seasons will see Mattila return to the Royal Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera, with roles including Marie Wozzeck, Kostelnička Jenufa and the title role of Ariadne auf Naxos.
Karita Mattila is represented by Intermusica.
September 2012 / 574 words. Not to be altered without permission. Please destroy all previous biographical material.
“What we see is a cool, leggy blonde who has all the cards in her hand and knows it. And what we hear is a radiant filter of echt-Straussian soprano singing, impeccably musical and capable of ecstatic blossom."
Andrew Clark, The Financial Times
“Karita Mattila is an artist who confounds expectations… She has a voice that is most often described in terms reserved for varieties of light – radiant, luminous, incandescent, shining. The same adjectives apply to the lady herself, whose artistry and integrity literally seem to brighten whatever she sings.”
Paul Driscoll, Opera News, March 2012
Title role in Janáček Jenůfa / Bayerische Staatsoper
cond. Kirill Petrenko / dir. Barbara Frey
“The excellent Karita Mattila… the audience were collectively stunned at the end of the opera. The protagonist Karita Mattila, a specialist in Slavic opera work, sang the role with intensity, which she sustained throughout. Her interpretation was realistic and touching… her voice is brilliant, unbreakable and unbeatable.”
Vladimir Frantar, rtvslo.si, May 2013
Wigmore Hall Recital / Songs by Poulenc, Debussy, Duparc, Sallinen & Marx
“Mattila has been a big supporter of living Finnish composers, especially Kaija Saariaho, and she was no less persuasive a champion here of Aulis Sallinen. His cycle of Four Dream Songs (Neljä laulua unesta) brought fearless singing of high intensity. And in a selection of songs by Marx, Mattila’s soaring romantic soprano and Matvejeff’s virtuoso accompaniments combined in performances of near-Wagnerian lushness and grandeur.”
“She exited as only Mattila could, with a blazing tango encore, like the Eva Perón of the recital hall, and every bit as compelling.”
Richard Fairman, Financial Times, April 2013
Title role in Janáček Jenůfa / Bayerische Staatsoper
cond. Kirill Petrenko / dir. Barbara Frey
“Finnish soprano Karita Mattila gives a radiant sensitivity to the role of Jenufa and the contours of the female soul, distraught and tormented through both her vocal performance and acting. Her impressive stage presence transports us into the action drawing the audience in, showing how she deeply understands her character.”
Luclebelge, paperblog.fr, March 2013
Opening of The Rest is Noise at Southbank Centre
Final Scene from Strauss Elektra / London Philharmonic Orchestra / cond. Vladimir Jurowski
“An unforgettable performance – by turns furious, exhausted, hysterical, and sweetly lyrical - of the aria which Salome sings to her beloved’s severed head. Unstaged this may have been, but no staged performance could have been more electrifying.”
Michael Church, Independent, January 2013
“Mattila lived up to such star billing. The last scene of Salome is all about mental extremes, as the crazed princess swings from vengeful fury to terror to dreaminess to necrophiliac lust. The piece still shocks, and Mattila has a flexibility of voice and an understanding of the music which lets her reach every one of those extremes, bringing her character to life in front of your eyes. She brought the house down.”
David Karlin, Bach Track, January 2013
“In a way it was a pity to reveal our Salome – the amazing Karita Mattila – so prematurely in the evening but the two early songs she offered in a group of four – Verführung (“Seduction”) and Gesang der Apollopriesterin (“Song of Apollo’s priestess”) – were real rarities with the latter offering the line “We bring the fruit in a silver salver” as a chilling portent of the lustful and deranged princess to come. Mattila sings with all of herself her shining open sound and the sheer physicality of her singing sweeps pretty much all before it.”
“Enter again Mattila, tellingly minus her shawl, to bare all, emotionally speaking, in the shocking finale scene. There are various ways to go in the singing and acting of this infamous scena but understatement cannot be one of them. Mattila went for broke, the fullest monty, the total disintegration of an abused young woman’s humanity subsumed as it is here by lust. She was fearless, taking the vocal line to the very limits of her possibilities and beyond. She slid grotesquely through the myriad chromatics living dangerously on the flat side of pitch and puffing out her chest notes at any mention of “death”. It wasn’t pretty but it was hair-raising and it – along with the rest of the concert – set the bar extraordinarily high for the year ahead.”
Edward Seckerson, Edward Seckerson, January 2013
“…few singers have her ability to immerse themselves so totally in their material, and the visceral quality of her performance was overwhelming. She finished it on her knees as the audience, quite rightly, rose to its feet.”
Tim Ashley, Guardian, January 2013
“This was what the audience had been waiting for, and as the 50-something-going-on-17 demonic, depraved, obsessed teenager, Karita Mattila did not disappoint…she was a terrifying display of preening, slobbering, petulant heat, any vocal strain offset by the extraordinary physicality of her performance – you really couldn’t take your eyes off her. Crushed and crouched on the floor, Strauss’s and Oscar Wilde’s heroine had tasted the bitterness of forbidden love, and the audience went mad for her. How very satisfying.”
Peter Reed, Classical Source, January 2013
“The concert, the opening of the year-long Festival inspired by Alex Ross’ book The Rest is Noise, climaxed in an astonishing reading by Mattila of the Final Scene from Salome; yet the works moving towards this climax were each, in their own way, thrilling.”
“Mattila’s low register sounded positively mezzo-ish. Her sound was beautifully open, her low register again effective in Gesang der Apollopriesterin (‘Song of Apollo’s priestess’).”
“Everything about Mattila became Salome, her bodily movements deranged and (seemingly) uncontrolled. She lived every word, projecting Salome’s obsessive nature to perfection. Jurowski ensured that the orchestra remained a vital part of this monodrama, but all eyes and ears were surely on Mattila. As far as Salome is concerned, she appears to have everything. The final orchestral stabbing chords finished her off, each flurry finding her moving closer to the floor. Remarkable, visceral stuff.”
Colin Clarke, Seen and Heard International, January 2013
“Mattila was on home turf in the surging ‘Verführung’ and the dramatic ‘Gesang der Apollopriesterin’ (Song of Apollo’s Priestess), singing and acting them with her characteristic power, warmth and rapport.”
Peter Reed, Classical Source, January 2013
“Salome was sung by Finnish soprano Karita Mattila, introduced by Thomas Hampson as "one of the great Salomes of this or any age". Mattila lived up to such star billing. The last scene of Salome is all about mental extremes, as the crazed princess swings from vengeful fury to terror to dreaminess to necrophiliac lust. The piece still shocks, and Mattila has a flexibility of voice and an understanding of the music which lets her reach every one of those extremes, bringing her character to life in front of your eyes. She brought the house down.”
“Whether you view Strauss as the end of a glorious era, the start of an exciting one or both, it made fascinating listening, and it's a privilege to have heard Mattila performing this role.”
David Karlin, Bach Track, January 2013
“Wow! Mattila looked stunning and sounded stunning, too… Mattila doesn’t merely vocalise the part: she lives it with every fibre of her body, capturing the various facets of the character’s weird admixture of lubricious sensuality and wide-eyed innocence. Sprechstimme (speech-song) is used to give some passages an Expressionistic edge and the effect is to suggest that Salome is not so much sexually obsessed as clinically insane. But there is nothing emptily vulgar or wantonly extreme about the interpretation; it’s too raw, too intense, too unashamed for that. Is it too late for us to hear Mattila perform the entire role in the opera house?”
Rupert Christiansen, Daily Telegraph, January 2013
Recital / St Paul’s Ordway Centre
“An opera singer with star power, a female lead who steals scenes and makes arias her own … Karita Mattila is a diva in the best sense of the word.
While Mattila was in excellent voice from the start of the seven songs by Alban Berg that launched the recital - her tone clear, weighty and strong throughout its ample range - her characterizations grew more vivid, the paeans to love became more urgent, the songs of sleep and dreams hypnotic.
The concert will leave no memory more indelible than a collection of songs by Richard Strauss that gradually grew more intense and ultimately explosive. The closing tandem of "Allerseelen" ("All Souls") and "Fruhlingsfeier" ("Spring Festival") was spellbinding, each conveying loss in decidedly different ways, one wistful, the other wailing with anguish.
Seldom will you experience a singer pouring herself into a performance like this. It seemed to leave Mattila drained and the audience astounded”.
Rob Hubbard, St Paul Pioneer Press, October 2012
Janáček The Makropulos Case
Finnish National Opera / dir. Olivier Tambosi
“Mattila has an irresistible, vibrant, physical presence. With her incredible body language and passion she builds a dramatic arc from cool glamour at the beginning, through cynical despair and occasional fragility in the second act, to boredom and resigned dejection at the end. As a whole, it was utterly captivating.”
Jan Granberg, HBL.fi, September 2012
Recital with Martin Katz / Savonlinna
“In Karita Mattila, you find combined the unusual symbiosis of a hearty girl next door, a world-class diva, a consummate artist answering only to music and an entertainer who knows how to entice her audience... She explored and shared the hidden meanings of the songs with her listeners.”
Riitta-Leena Lempinen-Vesa, Itä-Savo, July 2012
Emilia Marty in Janáček The Makropulos Case / Metropolitan Opera
cond. Jiří Bělohlávek“…the great Karita Mattila sings her dramatically, with vulnerability forming cracks in the steely persona. In the end, in a gorgeous final aria, she learns that it's death that gives our lives value, and she poignantly chooses the finality of the grave”
Henry Stewart,
L Magazine, May 2012
“Mattila may be one of the few dramatic sopranos today who can do justice to both the blasé femme fatale of the first two acts and to the emotional vulnerability of her character’s final scene. Her voice can be cool and aloof or bitingly sarcastic, as when she taunts the love-struck Prus in Act II. When, in the end, she chooses death and humanity over eternal, impersonal, youth, her voice becomes warm and vibrant, even a touch smoky, as if to allow her true age to catch up with her. She looked the part, too, in Dona Granata’s costumes, including a softly tailored blue power suit revealing just the right amount of satin and lace underneath”
Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, The Classical Review, May 2012
“Ms. Mattila was electrifying before she had sung a note. The lighting captured the luster of her blond hair, pale blue dress and knowing smile. This is what you call charisma…. her singing was commanding: cool and cagey one moment, intense and chilling the next... Ms. Mattila’s singing was a spellbinding mix of blazing fervor and ethereal beauty.”
Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, April 2012
“Centuries of life have distilled Emilia’s glamour into an almost supernatural force, and nobody in opera today better embodies this sort of allure than Karita Mattila, a supernova of star quality….Her lustrous soprano cut like a blade through the frenetic music depicting Emilia’s fury at those standing in her way. Later, when the diva reflects on the emptiness of her existence, Mattila’s voice throbbed with world-weary pain”.
James Jordan, The New York Post, April 2012
“Statuesque and hyper-blonde, she modelled modest costumes unlike the flamboyant gowns of her predecessors. She stalked the stage with cheerful grandiosity, exuded sexy excess and swaggered ferociously. She sang the role with silken purity masking extrovert thrust... she exerted magnetism at every tasteless turn... she earned her ovations.”
Martin Bernheimer, Opera, July 2012
“Karita Mattila gave a performance for the ages… triumphed as yet another Janacek heroine…She deftly manoeuvred the leaping notes of Janacek's 1926 score, showing off gleaming high notes alongside a middle register that rode over the color-filled orchestration... She won a huge ovation from the audience and seemed a bit overwhelmed.”
Ronald Blum, US Daily, April 2012
“... she has always been great in Janáček, and Makropulos finds her in her element both vocally and theatrically. She sounds great, and sings Janáček’s tricky rhythms with a spontaneity that suggests they are just being written... It is unquestionably her show.”
Likely Impossibilities, April 2012
Recital at Salle Pleyel
“… a wonderful foray into the music of Debussy, where Mattila’s sensitivity, her unconventional timbre and her feminine vocal line blossomed in Baudelaire’s poems (Jet d’eau and Recueillement)… She finished her musical and literary journey with Strauss, giving an ecstatic and ethereal performance of Wiegenlied, a grippingly melancholy Allerseelen, and a staggering Frühlingsfeier.
She sang with touchingly clear high notes, great personal presence, and highly expressive communication…The second half opened with three songs by Debussy, performed with perfect style, skilled breath control and great attentiveness to the texts. (…) And to close such a rich programme, the Finnish soprano returned to repertoire in which she is most at ease: four songs by Strauss, most notably a whispered Wiegenlied, without excessive swooning, but with exemplary legato and breath control.
And to finish in full voice, like a Tosca or a Salomé, Karita Mattila gave the dumbfounded audience the shivers with her powerful and sensual invocations of “Adonis! Adonis!” from Frühlingsfeier.
(…) the intense radiance of an artist who is both beautiful to look at and enthralling to listen to.”
Altamusica.com, March 2012
Recital at Carnegie Hall
“Aulis Sallinen’s moody Four Dream songs might have been written for her, so well did they suit her voice; her dusky sound complemented the sharp Finnish language, and her rich chest voice amplified the eerie atmosphere of the haunting sketches … [she has] an extraordinary instrument as well as artistry and personality to burn.”
Susan Brode, American Record Guide, March/April 2012
Quatre Instants / St Louis Symphony
cond. David Robertson
“Karita Mattila, the soprano for whom Ms. Saariaho wrote the work, wove her burnished, flexible tone around the texts and was particularly compelling in the cycle’s two central songs, “Douleur” (“Torment”), which demands a balance of passion and self-directed anger, and “Parfum de l’Instant,” a blend of wistfulness and contentment.”
Allan Koznin, The New York Times, March 2012
“Ms Mattila was regal, majestic, in her black jewelled gown and black scarf. Her voice was powerful enough to fit the majesty, but soon went onto fierce declarations, mighty leaps, a voluminous cry when singing 'Le remords me brûle!'"
Harry Rolnick,
Concerto Net, March 2012
“It was written for the tall, slim and sexy Mattila and her big, steely voice, and it’s hard to imagine anyone else performing it; the stage persona and Mattila’s expressive, charismatic physical side are as much a part of the performance as the vocalism and delivery. Even her dress -- a slim black creation with diagonal lines of sequins – and shawl were a part of the performance: the soprano started chastely covered and then gradually revealed more as the music did, giving the shawl a workout.”
Sarah Bryan Miller, STL Today, March 2012
Title Role and Leonore in Beethoven Fidelio
Houston Grand Opera / cond. Michael Hofstetter / dir. Jürgen Flimm
“The world-renowned Finnish soprano Karita Mattila plays both the title role and Leonore. While the introductory scene between soprano Britanny Wheeler as Marzelline and her spurned lover Jaquino, performed by Norman Reinhardt, was captivating, the clear, powerful voice of Kartia Mattila, the 1983 Singer of the World, was earth-shattering. She is recognized as one of the best sopranos of the modern era for obvious reasons. When the two sopranos harmonize in Act 1, it is a true thing of beauty.Together, O'Neill and Mattila evoke such an emotionally stirring performance that I completely ignored the English subtitles above the stage.”
Aaren Pastor, The Rice Thresher, November 2011
Alban Berg Seven Early Songs / Edinburgh Festival / Usher Hall
accomp. Malcolm Martineau
“Malcolm Martineau was as superlative a piano accompanist as ever, but there was no doubting who stood centre-stage for this recital. In persona as much as in voice, Finnish soprano Karita Mattila declares herself the grande dame of the concert platform. She had the audience thoroughly in the palm of her hand.
Mattila's voice has a seductive, mellow maturity to it, all round edges, velvet undertones and ultra creamy legato. It has the earthy warmth of a mezzo but an upper register that still soars. Most striking was her ability to shape endlessly long lines: the breath control was stunning.
There were glimpses of the operatic acting Mattila – in the drunken lover in Brahms's Vergebliches Ständchen, and the cutesy pout in Sibelius's Spring Passes Swiftly. In Strauss's Frühlingsfeier, with its elemental cries to Adonis, she unleashed the fearsome energy that makes her performances of Elektra and Salome so powerful.
At the end, she dropped to the floor in grandiose exhaustion, accidentally knocking a large jewel off her ring in the process. She stooped gracefully to pick it up, then popped it down her cleavage with a wink. A move only the surest of divas could get away with.”
Kate Molleson, Guardian, September 2011
“AS SHE LAUNCHED straight into Seven Early Songs by Alban Berg on Thursday evening, it was immediately evident there was no messing with Karita Mattila. ...
Mattila’s voice is huge. Berg’s little nightingale could have been an eagle spreading its wings as the immense power of her voice opened up to fill the hall. Nothing is forced though. Mattila is totally in control, with sustained, rounded tones and deep velvet low notes that especially suited the darker setting of Brahms’ Eternal Love.
And she can sing softly too. The Lullaby ... was beautifully smooth, even maternal, in her sensitive version. The fun and games of Vergebliches Ständchen showed yet another, humorous, side to her character...."
Carol Main, Edinburgh Festivals, September 2011
Lisa in Tchaikovsky Queen of Spades
Metropolitan Opera / dir. Elijah Moshinsky / cond. Andris Nelsons
“...thrilling fortissimos in her duets with Gherman... Mattila’s was a consummate negotiation between different tonal densities and textures... She was vulnerable without seeming fragile—in the scenes of public life, regal enough to be almost a younger version of the Countess herself. Mattila has a taste not so much for excess as for strategic outrageousness. She fell to her knees confessing to herself the illicit passion she harbors for Gherman, then touched her head practically back to the floor in a paroxysm of near-orgasmic surrender. She does these things so persuasively that critical judgment is all but suspended; She knows when and how often to insert this kind of acting statement.”
Joel Lobenthal, CityArts, March 2011