Anita Välkki (1926-2011)

One of the great Wagner sopranos, she had a voice "like polished Northern metal"

Anita Välkki (1926-2011)

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By Katri Kallionpää
     
      The internationally renowned Finnish opera singer Anita Välkki died at the Laakso Hospital in Helsinki on April 27th. Born in Valkeakoski on October 25th, 1926, Välkki was 84 years old when she passed away.
      Anita Välkki inherited her musical talent from her father. When she was only two years old, she could hum tunes that her father played on his accordion.
     
As a child, Anita Välkki saw a ”real diva” for the first time at the Kulju Manor, where her father worked as a groom on the estate.
      Anita helped her father to feed the horses, glancing at and secretly admiring an ”elegant female singer from Tampere” whom the manor owner’s son brought to see the stables.
      ”I ended up being an opera singer myself, but not a particularly elegant one. I have never learnt to be a mink-clad diva”, Välkki says in her autobiography Taiteen vuoksi (”For Art’s sake”).
     
”She never had any of the proud gestures of a great diva”, confirms Välkki’s friend and colleague, opera baritone Jorma Hynninen, adding:”She was a humble artist, quite an exemplary one”.
      There would have been every reason for some pride in her demeanour. Välkki was one of the first singers participating in the international breakthrough of Finnish music.
      Välkki had a unique, lyric-dramatic soprano with a characteristic klang. ”Polished Nordic metal”, Hynninen describes it.
     
Anita Välkki started her career as an actress in Kokkola and Vaasa. She began to take singing lessons only after she had gained some success in operetta productions.
      In 1955, her teacher secretly signed Välkki up for an audition at the Finnish National Opera. An hour after the singing test, Välkki walked out with a contract with the National Opera in her bag.
      Anita Välkki’s international career began in Stockholm in 1960, with her singing the leading role in Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca.
      The next year, she performed in the role of Brünnhilde in Wagner’s opera Die Walküre at the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden.
      Välkki’s first performance, in the same role, at New York’s Metropolitan in 1962 was a resounding success.
      Välkki sang at the Metropolitan, the Vienna State Opera, and at the Bayreuth Music Festival in Germany on several occasions.
      Anita Välkki was primarily known for her Wagnerian parts, but the role she sang most extensively worldwide was the lead in Puccini’s Turandot.
     
Välkki’s international career was overshadowed only by the fact that she was missing her daughter Raija, who was taken care of by her grandmother in Valkeakoski.
      In the 1970s and 1980s Välkki settled permanently in Finland. She appeared for example at the Savonlinna Opera Festival and at the Finnish National Opera.
      Later on, Välkki changed from high soprano roles to the mezzo-soprano repertoire.
      ”For Anita Välkki, an opera role did not mean just singing, but she performed it like an actress, as if she were experiencing it as real”, Hynninen notes.
     
Välkki also made a significant career as a singing teacher. In 1982, Välkki began teaching at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.
      ”At one point, everyone wanted to be Välkki’s pupil”, Hynninen says.
      Välkki was teaching another Finnish soprano Johanna Rusanen-Kartano almost through the entire 1990s. ”All the important years”, says Rusanen-Kartano.
     
”She was extremely warm and motherly. She could both cry and laugh within the same sentence”, Rusanen-Kartano recalls.
      For example, Välkki was present the whole week both in the Timo Mustakallio Singing Competition in Savonlinna in 1995 and in the Lappeenranta Singing Competition in 1996. Rusanen-Kartano won both competitions.
      ”I lived with her. She was an enormous mental support. Every day she came to help me with voice opening in the morning. She knew how one could succeed at an important moment, how one could find a passionate artist inside oneself”, Rusanen-Kartano says of her former teacher.
     
Even after her active years, Välkki’s voice was ”a great voice; simply stunning. It was the instrument of the millennium”, Rusanen-Kartano notes.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 29.4.2011


Links:
  YouTube: Anita Välkki: "Vissi d´arte" (Tosca)
  YouTube: Anita Välkki sings Isolde´s Liebestod from Wagner´s Tristan and Isolde with John Barbirolli and the Hallé Orchestra in 1965
  WQXR Opera Blog: In Memoriam - Anita Välkki (contains further audio samples)

KATRI KALLIONPÄÄ / Helsingin Sanomat
katri.kallionpaa@hs.fi