The Finnish baritone Arttu Kataja studied singing in Helsinki and is a two-time winner of the International Mozart Competition in Salzburg. He has been a permanent member of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin ensemble since 2006, where he has already sung the major Mozart roles in his repertoire, as well as Peter Besenbinder/Hänsel und Gretel, Marcello/La Bohème and Sharpless/Butterfly. In addition to Daniel Barenboim, his partners on the podium in Berlin have included Philippe Jordan, Andris Nelsons, Sir Simon Rattle and Omer Meir Wellber.  

Guest engagements have taken him to the Theater an der Wien (Mr. Slender/Salieri's Falstaff), the Théâtre du Capitole (Sprecher/Zauberflöte, Scherasmin/Oberon, Schaunard/La Bohéme), the Teatro Municipal in Santiago de Chile (Mr. Flint/Billy Budd, Belcore/L'elisir d'amore), the Deutsche Oper am Rhein (Figaro, Masetto, Guglielmo), the Strasbourg Festival, the Savonlinna Opera Festival (Leporello/Don Giovanni, Papageno, Morales/Carmen, Marullo/Rigoletto), the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki (Il viaggio a Reims, Le nozze di Figaro, Arabella, Così fan tutte, Andrea Chénier), the Tampere Opera (Belcore, Sharpless, Marcello, Germont) and to Japan, together with Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Staatsoper. He also appeared in the production of Orlando Paladino under the direction of René Jacobs.

His busy concert schedule includes many national and international appearances. He has repeatedly worked with René Jacobs in concerts and recordings with the Akademie für Alte Musik, the RIAS Kammerchor, the Freiburger Barockorchester, the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra and the Basel Chamber Orchestra, among others, as well as with Frieder Bernius and the Musikpodium Stuttgart. He has also performed his wide-ranging repertoire with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester (Rinaldo Alessandrini), the Int. Bachakademie Stuttgart (Hans-Christoph Rademann), the Zürcher Sing-Akademie (Florian Helgath), the Dresdner Philharmonie (Michael Sanderling), the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra (Hartmut Haenchen), the NDR Radiophilharmonie and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Andrew Manze), the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (James Gaffigan), the Symphoniker Hamburg (Andris Poga) and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (Nicholas Collon).

Recent highlights include the release of his latest CD together with mezzo-soprano Katharina Kammerloher and pianist Eric Schneider with Mahlers‘ songs from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn”, the Brahms Requiem at the Rheingau Music Festival, Berlioz’ La Damnation de Faust with the Coro e Orquestra Gulbenkian in Lisbon under Hannu Lintu, Bruckner's Mass no. 1 with the RIAS Chamber Choir at the Philharmonie Berlin, a tour of the Christmas Oratorio through the Netherlands with the Nederlands Kamerkoor, B' Rock and under the direction of Peter Dijkstra, and Leoš Janáček's “The Excursions of Mr Broucek” with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle. On the opera stage, he made his role debut as Germont in Verdi's Traviata at Tampere Opera in Finland and at his home in Berlin as the title role in Le Nozze di Figaro and Capulet in Roméo et Juliette under Giuseppe Mentuccia.

Arttu Kataja's recordings include, among others:
Winterreise (Alba 2022) and Serious Songs (Alba 2020) with pianist Pauliina Tukiainen, Beethoven: Missa Solemnis (Carus, 2019), St Matthew Passion (Harmonia Mundi, 2013) 

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