Biography
Niina Keitel is one of the most successful Finnish mezzos of today. After graduating from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki she started her career at the Staatstheater Darmstadt, where she sang a wide repertoire of roles. Afterwards, she joined the ensemble of Nationaltheater Mannheim before becoming a member of the ensemble at the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki. Today she works as a freelance singer.
Guest performances led her to renowned houses and festivals such as the Opéra national de Paris, Opera Frankfurt, Opera Cologne, Royal Danish Opera, Royal Swedish Opera, Savonlinna Opera Festival, Daegu International Opera Festival, and the Munich Biennale.
Recent opera highlights include her debut as Herodias/Salome as well as Annina/Der Rosenkavalier at Staatstheater Mainz, her debuts as Fricka/Die Walküre and Santuzza/Cavalleria rusticana as well as the roles of Mother Marie/Dialogues des Carmélites, Magdalene/Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, 2nd Norn/Götterdämmerung and Maddalena/Rigoletto at the Finnish National Opera, the latter also at the Royal Danish Opera Copenhagen, Flora/La traviata, Preziosilla/La forza del destino (under Santtu-Matias Rouvali) as well as the title role in Carmen at the Tampere Opera, Carmen at Theater Bonn, Grimgerde/Die Walküre at Teatro Petruzzelli Bari (under Stefan Anton Reck) and at Teatro San Carlo Napoli (under Juraj Valcuha), Waltraute/Die Walküre at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm, Adalgisa/Norma at the Immling Festival, her debut as Brangäne/Tristan und Isolde at Theater Nordhausen, Filipjewna/Eugene Onegin am Theater Bielefeld, and the role of Margarita in York Höller’s Der Meister und Margarita at Opera Cologne.
As a versatile concert singer Niina Keitel has performed with numerous symphony orchestras in Finland, Sweden, Germany and France and collaborated with conductors such as Kent Nagano, Philippe Jordan, Sir Roger Norrington, Lawrence Foster, Dan Ettinger, Leif Segerstam, Mikko Franck and Santtu-Matias Rouvali, to name a few.
Highlights on the concert stage include a concert tour in Japan, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde at the Colmar Les Musicales Festival and in Cagliari, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in Gothenburg and Tampere, Rossini’s Stabat Mater at the Berlin Philharmonie, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis and Sallinen’s opera Kullervo/Smith’s young wife - each under Hannu Lintu at the Savonlinna Opera Festival - Verdi’s Requiem at Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, as well as Sibelius‘ Kullervo in Tokyo with the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and with the Finnish Radio Orchestra under Hannu Lintu.
Furthermore, she could be seen and heard in numerous world premieres both on the concert and the opera stage. In addition to her career as an opera and concert singer, Niina Keitel was Artistic Director of the Lemi Music Festival in Finland (2013-18).
In the upcoming season 2025-26 her projects include, among others, the role of Siegrune in a new production of Die Walküre (Tobias Kratzer) at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich under Vladimir Jurowski.
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