Matti Salminen (Bass)
Matti Salminen (born 7 July 1945, in Turku)
is a Finnish operatic bass
singer, who has sung at all of the most important opera
houses of the world, including the Metropolitan and Bayreuth
Festival.
Salminen is distinguished by an imposing figure and height; an enormous,
sonorous and dark voice; and an expressive face. According to one reviewer, in
his prime Salminen was "... simply the largest bass voice in captivity. It is
not just its roar in powering over Wagner's maximum orchestra, but the way he
carves the sonority and forms the color."
He performed as Fafner and Hagen in the PBS video broadcast Ring Cycle from the Metropolitan Opera, for the largest
viewing-audience of the Ring in history.
He sang in the premiere of Sallinen’s Kuningas
Lear in 2000 (King Lear, title role), and Jukka
Linkola's Robin Hood in 2011 (Sheriff).
Salminen has a contract at the Zurich Opera, and he also frequently performs
in his native Finland. Most of all he has been
admired in such Wagner roles as Daland (The Flying Dutchman), Gurnemanz and Titurel (Parsifal), King Marke (Tristan
und Isolde), Fasolt and Fafner (Das
Rheingold / Siegfried), Hunding
(Die Walkure), and Hagen (Gotterdammerung).
At the Bayreuther Festival he first appeared in 1976 (Titurel (Parsifal),
Hunding (Walkure), Fasolt (Rheingold) and continued until 1989 adding Fafner
(Rheingold, Siegfried), Daland (Fliegender Hollander), King Mark (Tristan und
Isolde), Heinrich (Lohengrin), Pogner (Meistersinger), Landgraf (Tannhauser) and
Hagen (Gotterdammerung) to his roles there.
Other important roles are King Philip II (Don
Carlos by Giuseppe Verdi), the Grand
Inquisitor in the same work, Seneca in L'Incoronazione di
Poppea, Sarastro in Die
Zauberflote, the Commendatore in Don
Giovanni, and the title roles of Boris
Godunov and Khovanshchina.
Salminen is also one of the most videotaped opera singers in history. At
least three different performances as Hagen are available on DVD; also two
performances as the Commendatore, and two as Daland.
In his youth he earned money for voice lessons by singing Finnish tangos in
night clubs. He first caught public eye as a lucky understudy in the role of
King Phillip II, which he continues performing
(pirated recordings exist from as recently as 2008).
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