Arttu Kataja

Baritone Arttu Kataja has been a member of the soloist ensemble at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin since 2006. There he has performed several major baritone roles, such as the Count and Figaro in The Marriage of Figaro, as well as Marcello in La Bohème. He has also appeared as a guest at, among others, the Theater an der Wien, Hamburg State Opera, and the opera house in Santiago de Chile.

At the Savonlinna Opera Festival, Kataja has performed in, among other productions, Don Giovanni and Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet. At the Finnish National Opera he has been heard in, for example, Rossini’s The Journey to Reims and Mozart’s Così fan tutte. Early music lies close to his heart, and Kataja performs regularly as an oratorio soloist in Central Europe and Finland. He has, for instance, sung Bach’s St John Passion with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, Handel’s Messiah as a soloist with the Zürcher Sing-Akademie, and Haydn’s Orlando Paladino under the baton of René Jacobs. Kataja is also an accomplished Lied singer. His debut recording Serious Songs (Kataja/Tukiainen, Alba 2020) received excellent reviews and was nominated for Yle’s Recording of the Year as well as for an Emma Award. His 2022 recording of Schubert’s Winterreise (Kataja/Tukiainen, Alba) was likewise highly acclaimed.

Arttu Kataja’s singing career began in 2002 when he won the Lappeenranta Singing Competition. During his studies, he also won the Kangasniemi Singing Competition and received both third prize and the audience prize in the Mozart Singing Competition in Salzburg.