Finnish soprano Tuuli Takala was born in Helsinki and studied voice, violin and music education at the Sibelius Academy in her hometown. She made her professional debut in 2013 at the Finnish National Opera as the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. In 2014 she returned there as Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro) as well as in 2021 as Violetta Valéry (La traviata).

Since 2015, she has been an ensemble member of the Semperoper Dresden where she has performed roles such as Lucia (Lucia di Lammermoor), Gilda (Rigoletto), Micaëla (Carmen), Capriccio-Sängerin, Sophie (Der Rosenkavalier), Blonde (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Marzelline (Fidelio), the Queen of the Night, and since the 19/20 season also as Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Susanna, Waldvogel (Siegfried), Olympia (Les contes d’Hoffmann), La Contessa di Folleville (Il viaggio a Reims), Echo (Ariadne auf Naxos) and Valencienne (Die lustige Witwe).

In the 2023/24 season Tuuli Takala will make her role debut at the Semperoper as Adina (L’elisir d’amore), she can be seen again as Pamina and she will embody the role of Teresa in the new production of Hector Berlioz’ Benvenuto Cellini. She will also make her role debuts as Mimì (La bohème) at the Opéra-Théâtre de Metz Métropole, as Blanche (Dialogues des Carmélites) at the Finnish National Opera and she will return to Hamburg State Opera in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor.

Guest appearances in recent seasons have taken her to the Hamburg State Opera as Konstanze (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), the Opéra-Théâtre de Metz Métropole as Violetta Valéry, Zurich Opera as Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), and to the Tampere Opera as Pamina and as Amanda Rossi in the world premiere of Olli Kortekangas’ Veljeni Vartija. In 2021, she made her Bayreuth Festival debut as the Flower Girl (Parsifal) and returned to the 2022 Festival as the Shepherd (Tannhäuser). Other guest engagements to date have taken her to the Savonlinna Opera Festival as Pamina, Gilda, Marguerite (Faust) and Zerlina (Don Giovanni), as the Queen of the Night to all three Berlin opera houses, the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, the Volksoper Wien, the Aalto Theater Essen, Opéra de Toulon, among others.

Tuuli Takala is an award-winning artist with 1st Prizes from both the Timo Mustakallio and Kangasniemi singing competitions in Finland 2013, prizes from the 2015 Belvedere Competition in Amsterdam, and the Arnold Schönberg Center Prize from the 2013 Hilde Zadek competition in Vienna. In 2014 the Pro Musica Foundation in Finland named her Young Musician of the Year, and in 2018 the Semperoper Dresden awarded her the Curt Taucher Förderpreis.

Tuuli Takala has already worked with musicians such as Philippe Auguin, Frédéric Chaslin, Ádám Fischer, Vladimir Jurowski, Susanna Mälkki, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, John Storgårds, Christian Thielemann and Omer Meir Wellber, among others.

On the concert stage, Tuuli Takala was heard in the 2022/23 season as soprano soloist in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Eva Ollikainen and in the world premiere of Olli Kortekangas’ new song cycle Songs of Meena with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vänskä. She also sang in Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Dalia Stasevska and also in Mahler’s 8th Symphony (Mater Gloriosa) with the NDR Radiophilharmonie under Ingo Metzmacher at the Hanover Art Festival.

Further, her concert repertoire includes Requiem, Exsultate jubilate and the Mass in C minor by Mozart, Ein deutsches Requiem by Brahms, Händel’s Messiah, Poulenc’s Gloria, Rossini’s Petite messe solennelle, and J. S. Bach’s Passions, the Mass in b minor and the Christmas Oratorio. In 2017 Takala was featured as soprano soloist in the ZDF Advent Concert at Dresden’s Frauenkirche with Staatskapelle Dresden under the baton of Christian Thielemann.
She is also a passionate singer of lieder and art song and has performed in recitals and concerts across Finland and in London, Vienna and Tokyo among others.