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- OLLI
RANTASEPPÄ, tenor
Olli Rantaseppä began his
solo career in the Cantores Minores boys' choir. It was there that he
was discovered by the Savonlinna Opera Festival, which invited
him to sing the first boy in The Magie Flute and Feodor, son of
Boris Godunovas sung by Martti Talvela. Together they also made
guest appearances at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg and
elsewhere.
Rantaseppä then studied
voice at the Sibelius Academy with Matti Lehtinen and Kimmo Lappalainen,
receiving his diploma with top marks in 1991. He then went on to obtain
a Master's degree in 1995.
Since 1992 he has been a
member of the chorus of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin while also taking a
number of solo parts in Henze’s Der Prinz von Homburg (1.
Heiduck), Janacheck’s Aus einem Totenhaus (Der junge Sträfling),
Puccini’s Il Tabarro (Il Tenore), Tchaikovsky's Eugene
Onegin (Vorsänger), Strauss's Rosenkavalier (Leopold) and
Arabella (Kellerdiener, Djura, Welko).
In 2000-03 he sang the
First Man in Joonas Kokkonen's The Last Temptations at the
Fact or Fiction Festival in Nilsiä, Finland.
His Savonlinna tenor debut
he made in 2003 in Wagner’s Tristan (Der Hirt) and Puccini’s
Turandot (Altoum), which he sang further in summers 2004-05 and then
in summers 2006-2007 in the cast of a new production of Bizet’s Carmen
(Dancairo). In season 2005 he sang in Opera de Rouen in the production
of Strauss’s Elektra (Junge Diener).
In addition to opera. his
repertoire contains a number of oratorios and passions, especially the
great Bach works, like the Passions of St. John and St. Mattheus
(Arias), B-minor Mass as well as Christmas Oratory, numerous Cantatas,
Händels Messiah, Mendelssohn-Bartholdys Elias, Saint-Sains Christmas
Oratory and Puccinis Missa di Gloria, just to mention few or them; and
he has given Lied and church recitals in various parts of Europe and for
example in Teheran in Iran and Tokyo in Japan. | 
