Mattila appears regularly in the major opera houses worldwide, 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, Toronto Roy Thomson Hall, and Großes Festspielhaus in Salzburg.
Born in Somero, Finland, Mattila graduated 1983 from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, where she studied singing with Liisa Linko-Malmio. She then continued her studies with Vera Rózsa in London.
Also in 1983, Mattila won the first Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. In 1985, she made her Royal Opera House, Covent Garden debut as Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte.
She was seen as Emma in the first ever televised production of Schubert's Fierrabras at the Vienna State Opera in 1988. In 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, and 1996 debuts in Paris in Wagner's Lohengrin, Verdi's Don Carlos.
Mattila has won Grammy Awards for "Best Opera Recording" for Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in 1998 and for Jenůfa in 2004. She was awarded the Evening Standard Ballet, Opera and Classical Music Award for "Outstanding Performance of the Year" in 1998 for her performance of Elisabeth in Don Carlos at the Royal Opera House.
In 2001 The New York Times chose Karita Mattila as the best singer of the year for her performance in Fidelio at the Metropolitan Opera, and in the same year she was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award "Outstanding Achievement in Opera".
Mattila's 2004 New York performances in Salome and 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 2005byMusical 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." BBC Music Magazine named Mattila as one of the top 20 sopranos of the recorded era in 2007.[2]
Worldwide audiences saw Mattila in Manon Lescaut live in movie theatres in 2008. Metropolitan's Salome and Tosca were seen live in High Definition worldwide in 2008 and 2009, respectively.
In 2010 at Opéra National de Lyon, Mattila created the role of Émilie du ChâteletinKaija Saariaho's monodrama Émilie, which was dedicated to her.
In 2014, Mattila was scheduled to sing Four Last Songs with the Munich PhilharmonicatCarnegie Hall. However, when Valery Gergiev, who had publicly supported Vladimir Putin's stance on Ukraine and gay rights, was brought in to conduct, she refused to perform if he remained. Gergiev was replaced with Fabio Luisi. Mattila received threats for her action.[3]
In 2020, Mattila played a parody of herself as an opera diva stuck in Finland, in the new comic opera Covid fan tutte.
In December 2020 Mattila was awarded the Order of the Lion of Finland, Commander, First Class.[4]
Mattila lives in Naples, Florida.[5] Before moving to Florida in the mid-2000s, she lived in London, England, for about twenty years.[6]
In 1988 she met and, in 1992, married Tapio Kuneinen, who served as her manager.[7] They divorced in February 2019.[8][9][5]
She has been active on Twitter since October 2018, and has stated that it was a "lifesaver" after her divorce.[9][5][10][11]
Upon the abrupt cancellation of her Jenůfa at the Royal Opera House in late February 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, she moved to an apartment in Helsinki, Finland, until she was able to travel and work safely again and return home.[9] She returned to Florida in April 2021.[12]
Lieder
Live
Compilations
Role
Opera
Composer
Place
Date
Emma
1988
Donna Elvira
1990
Donna Elvira
1990
Rosalinde
Vienna State Opera & Tokyo NHK
1994
Amelia
1995
Elsa
1996
Elisabeth
1996
Hanna Glawari
1997
Manon Lescaut
1999
Leonore
2000
Eva
2001
Amelia
2002
Arabella
2002
Salome
2003
Salome
2004
Manon Lescaut
2008
Salome
2008
Kát'a
2008
Tosca
2009
Tosca
2010