SILJA AALTO

Biography

Finnish soprano Silja Aalto is hailed for the beauty and clarity of her voice and captivating stage presence. Recent highlights in 2026 include her debut as Senta in Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer at Opéra de Rouen, Riitta in Kokkonen’s Last temptations at Savonlinna Operafestival and a First Lady in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte on European tour with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.

Upcoming engagements include Sibelius’s Luonnotar at the Finnish National Opera and her debut as Cio-Cio-San (Madama Butterfly) at the Savonlinna Opera Festival in summer 2026. In August 2026, she will sing Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Mikkeli Music Festival, and she returns to the Finnish National Opera as Countess Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro in October 2026.

Aalto is a regular guest at the Estonian National Opera, where her roles have included Mimì (La bohème), Leonora (Il trovatore) and Elsa (Lohengrin) and Countess (Le nozze di Figaro). In the Finnish National Opera she has appeared as Elisabetta di Valois in Verdi’s Don Carlo and soprano in Christian Spuck’s staged version of Verdi’s Requiem

Her operatic repertoire includes also Leonore (Fidelio), Sieglinde (Die Walküre), Elisabet (Tannhäuser) and Mrs Alice (Falstaff),

Aalto has sung with many prestigious orchestras around the Europe, including BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse, Latvian National Symphony Orchestra and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra among others.

Silja Aalto is the recipient of several major international singing competition.

Photo Gallery

Aalto was a commanding presence on stage, her pale-blue gown studded with sequins which matched the shimmering effects of the composer’s inspiration. Hers is a big powerful voice, easily negotiating the wide leaps in the tessitura and gliding effortlessly upwards in the microtonality which is one of Saariaho’s hallmarks. The incantatory elements, evident in the much-repeated “I am” phrases of Sabina’s poem, form an important structure in what is essentially a short psycho-drama, beseeching, imploring, pleading to be set free from all earthly constraint. Whether this amounts, in the words of the BBC publicity machine, to a “hypnotic snapshot of womanhood”, is debatable, but the mesmerising qualities of the piece are palpable. Equally effective were the many whispered moments which travelled very effectively across the Royal Albert Hall as well as the churning of the lower strings that provided a counterpoint to Aalto’s floating of her solo line.

Opera Today
Alexander Hall

Finnish soprano Silja Aalto, trained at Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy, has a voice of great purity (it sounded even more so live than on the broadcast). Her voice is incredibly strong, yet warm of tone; she even projected a whisper to the ends of the Royal Albert Hall. A particular emphasis on the phrase ‘sacred clown’ seemed to be important to both composer and interpreters. – – – A mesmerising moment of magic: a true Proms highlight.

Seen and Heard International
13/08/2024 by Colin Clarke