Matti Salminen

Who is Matti Salminen?

Matti Salminen is a Finnish operatic bass singer, who has sung at some 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, and Jukka Linkola's Robin Hood in 2011.

Salminen has a contract at the Zurich Opera, and he also frequently performs in his native Finland. He has been admired in such Wagner roles as Daland, Gurnemanz and Titurel, King Marke, Fasolt and Fafner, Hunding, and Hagen.

At the Bayreuth Festival he first appeared in 1976