Karita Mattila

Karita Mattila (pronounced KA-re-ta MATT-e-la[1]) is a leading opera soprano. She was born Karita Marjatta Mattila on September 5, 1960 in Somero, Finland.

Mattila appears regularly in the major opera houses world-wide, including the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House in London, Théâtre du Châtelet, Opéra Bastille, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Vienna State Opera and Großes Festspielhaus, Salzburg and with top orchestras.

In 1983, Mattila won the first Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. The same year she graduated from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, where she studied singing with Liisa Linko-Malmio. She then continued her studies with Vera Rozsa in London.

In 1985, she made her Covent Garden debut with the Royal Opera as Pamina in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.

In 1988, she was seen as Emma in the first ever televised production of Schubert's Fierrabras at the Vienna State Opera.

On March 22, 1990, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni.

In 1994, she made her Spanish debut as Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin in Madrid.

In 1996 followed important Paris debuts in Wagner's Lohengrin, Verdi's Don Carlos and in 2002 in Strauss' Arabella.

Grammy Award for "Best Opera Recording" in 1998 and 2004.

In 2003, Paris saw her first Salome and she was awarded one of France’s highest cultural honours, Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.

In 2004, Mattila sang her first New York Salome at the Metropolitan Opera, which together with the subsequent Káťa Kabanová inspired the New York press to write: "When the history of the Metropolitan Opera around the time of the millennium is written, Karita Mattila will deserve her own chapter."

In 2005, she was named Musician of the Year 2005 by Musical America which describes her "the most electrifying singing actress of our day, the kind of performer who renews an aging art form and drives the public into frenzies."

In 2007, she was named by BBC Music Magazine as one of the top 20 sopranos of the recorded era.

World-wide audiences saw her Manon Lescaut live in movie theatres in 2008.

On September 23, 2008, she reprised Salome at the Metropolitan Opera, again broadcast world-wide in High Definition on October 11, 2008.

She opened the Metropolitan Opera's 2009-10 season with Tosca, which was seen live in HD world-wide on October 10, 2009.