• Country: Finland

Biography

Anna-Kristiina Kaappola is a leading Finnish soprano who began to appear regularly on stage in the middle 1990s.

Her initial instrument was piano. When she entered Tampere (Finland) Conservatory in 1982 she also began studying voice with Reijo Toivoskoski. She began college-level studies at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki in 1987 with Aili Purtonen, and has remained as a student and a teacher in the opera department.

In 1990 she was first prize at the Aberdeen Singing Competition. In 1991 she also won a first prize (Eero Rantala Foundation prize) in the Timo Mustakallio Singing Competition. She took third in the Lappeenrante Singing Competition of 1992, and won the special prize for modern vocal music in the 1994 Mirjam Helin Singing Competition.

She obtained her certification in singing from Sibelius Conservatory in 1995, and has attended master classes with Birgit Nilsson, Peter Berne, Vera Rozsa, and Tom Krause.

She began appearing on-stage as a professional singer in 1992 at the Savonlinna Opera Festival, Finland's best-known international operatic event. She received a contract as a soloist with the Finnish National Opera company in 1997.

She sings high lyric and coloratura parts. Her early parts included the Celestial Voice in Verdi's Don Carlos, Young Pilgrim in Wagner's Tannhäuser, Annina in Verdi's La Traviata, the Fairy-Tale Prince and the Nightingale in Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortiléges, Frasquita in Bizet's Carmen, Cissie Woodger in Britten's Albert Herring, the Falcon and Hüter der Schwelle in Richard Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten, and the Lady-in-Waiting in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. As her career has developed she has portrayed Norina in Donizetti's Don Pasquale, Marguerite in Gounod's Faust, Juliette in Romeo et Juliette, the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute, Constanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and both Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro (after earlier having sung Barbarina in the same opera).

She is also an active recitalist and concert singer. She has developed a special interest in the more modern repertory. She has recorded the soprano solo parts of the reconstruction of Alexander Scriabin's Prefatory Action under the baton of Vladimir Ashkenazy and the wordless instrumental part for soprano voice in the second movement of Nielsen's Third Symphony under the direction of Jukka-Pekka Salonen. ~ Joseph Stevenson, All Music Guide