Baritone Jorma Hynninen is one of the most highly appreciated Finnish vocal artists of all time. His unprejudiced and profound approach to art has contributed not only to a renewal in the art of interpreting solo songs but also to the creation of a number of new contemporary operas. In Lied, he has concentrated on the song cycles of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Wolf and the solo songs of Sibelius, Oskar Merikanto, Toivo Kuula and Yrjö Kilpinen. He has appeared at innumerable distinguished venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, the Musikverein, the Concertgebouw, Boston Symphony Hall, Chicago Symphony Hall and the festivals at Tanglewood, Ravinia and Salzburg.

Hynninen's opera repertoire includes more than 60 roles, most importantly Rodrigo in Don Carlos, the Count in Le nozze di Figaro, Wolfram in Tannhäuser, the title role in Eugene Onegin and the main roles in a dozen Finnish contemporary operas by composers such as Sallinen and Rautavaara, many of them written specifically for him. He has appeared at the world’s leading opera houses in New York, Milan, Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Antwerp, Paris, Moscow, Buenos Aires, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In March 2007, he recreated the role of Topi in the opera Punainen viiva ('The Red Line') by Aulis Sallinen in a new production at the Finnish National Opera.

Jorma Hynninen has appeared with a number of distinguished conductors, including Klaus Tennstedt, Lorin Maazel, James Levine, Riccardo Muti, Riccardo Chailly, Colin Davis, Seiji Ozawa, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Leif Segerstam. His most significant opera recordings, apart from the dozen Finnish operas he has recorded, are Le nozze di Figaro (Muti), Elektra (Ozawa) and Il prigioniero (Salonen). His extensive discography ranges from all of the above to spirituals and jazz. He was Professor of Voice at the Sibelius Academy from 1997 to 2003, and he has given several masterclasses.


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