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The
Finnish bass Jaakko Ryhänen was born in Tampere. Before turning his
attention towards a musical career he became an elementary school
teacher. He studied in Helsinki, Copenhagen and Rome and made his opera
debut in 1972 as a guest with the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki
where he has been a permanent ensemble member since 1975. In his home
country he is also a regular guest at the Savonlinna Opera Festival each
summer.
His
international career startet in 1981 when he made his Bolshoi Opera
debut as Banquo in Verdi’s Macbeth and was continued in 1983 when
he sang in a performance of Joonas Kokkonen’s The Last Temptations
presented by the Finnish National Opera at the Metropolitan Opera
New York.
During
his career Jaakko Ryhänen has sung in all the leading opera houses
around the world including Covent Garden, Wiener Staatsoper, La Scala,
Bolshoi Theatre, the Marinski Theatre, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Bavarian
State Opera, Hamburg State Opera, Zürich, Teatro La Fenice Venice,
Paris, Chicago Lyric and Los Angeles. One of his actual engagements is
the role of Daland in The Flying Dutchman at the Bayreuth Festival that
he will sing until 2007.
His
repertoire includes most of the leading bass roles such as Daland/The
Flying Dutchman, Sarastro/The Magic Flute, Prince Gremin/ Eugene Onegin,
Fiesco/Simon Boccanegra, Osmin/The Abduction from the Serail,
Boris/Boris Godunov, Leporello & Komtur/Don Giovanni, Hunding/The
Valkyrie, Fafner/Rheingold, Landgraf/Tannhäuser, Philip II/Don Carlos,
Ramphis/Aida, Rocco/Fidelio, Basilio/The Barber of Seville, Raimondo/Lucia
di Lammermoor, Highpriest/Nabucco, Sparafucile/Rigoletto.
Ryhänen's concert repertoire is wide ranging and includes the sacred
vocal works of Bach, Beethoven, Dvorak, Haydn, Handel, Mozart, Rossini
and Verdi. These and other works have been performed in the great
concert halls around the world with conductors such as Zubin Mehta,
Riccardo Muti, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Wolfgang Sawallisch and Gennadi
Rozhdestvenski.
In
honour of his notable contribution to Finnish music Ryhänen was awarded
with the Pro-Finlandia medal in 1989.
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