Martti Talvela

Martti Talvela
Martti Talvela
Background information
Birth name	Martti Olavi Talvela
Born	(1935-02-04)February 4, 1935 Hiitola, Finland
Died	July 22, 1989(1989-07-22) (aged 54) Juva, Finland
Occupation(s)	operatic bass
Years active	1960–1989

Martti Olavi Talvela (February 4, 1935 – July 22, 1989) was a Finnish operatic bass.

Born in Hiitola, Finland (now in the Republic of Karelia), the eighth of ten children he studied in Lahti and , and made his operatic debut in Helsinki in 1960 as Sparafucile. He trained as a boxer in his youth and developed the stamina necessary for the biggest roles. Originally Talvela was educated as a primary school teacher in Savonlinna, Eastern Finland (1952–1956), and he worked in that occupation at three schools (1957–1960). He sang at the Stockholm Royal Opera in Sweden from 1961 to 1962, before becoming a regularly employed singer at the Deutsche Oper of Berlin in 1962, the same year as his debut at Bayreuth.

In 1970, the Senate (government) of West Berlin formally granted him the rank of Kammersänger. He was especially acclaimed as the title character in Boris Godunov, a role he performed 39 times at the Metropolitan Opera between 1974 and 1987, and as Pimen from the same work, as Paavo Ruotsalainen in The Last Temptations, as a Wagner singer who frequently performed at Bayreuth (King Marke, Hunding, Fasolt, Fafner, Hagen (one critic described his Hagen as an "elemental force") and Titurel), as the Commendatore, Sarastro, Dosefei, and Prince Gremin, as King Phillip II, the Grand Inquisitor and, in the later part of his career, the title character in Glinka's Ivan Susanin. As his final record he left, terribly thinned out by illness, a warm and heartfelt version of Schubert's Winterreise. He also left at least two recorded performances of Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death – one with full orchestra and one with piano accompaniment.