Carla Huhtanen
Canadian-born Carla Huhtanen is praised by audiences for her “vivid, fine-toned, accurately placed coloratura” (Independent), and her “gorgeous toned soprano of immense vocal flexibility” (Globe and Mail). Recent and upcoming performances include Vivier’s Lonely Child and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, Monteverdi’s Il ritorno di Ulisse and Handel’s The Resurrection with Opera Atelier, Boulez’s le soleil des eaux with Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Konstanze in The Abduction from the Seraglio with Opera Columbus,and a Bernstein Tribute with the RTÉ Orchestra (Dublin) with John Wilson.
Carla debuted in Italy at Gran Teatro la Fenice as Daisy Park in Gershwin’s Lady, Be Good! and returned to La Fenice as Athenaïs in Cherubini’s Anacréon. In the UK, she was Lisetta in Garsington Opera’s La Gazzetta (Rossini) and returned as Serpetta in their production of Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera, a performance repeated at the Barbican Centre’s Mostly Mozart series. Active in France, she has sung the title role of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen for festival mars en baroque (Provence tour) and Angelica in Handel’s Orlando for Théatre Gyptis (Marseille), at festival musique au coeur (Antibes) and festival de Chartres.
A reprise performance of Lady, Be Good! took her to Lisbon’s Teatro Sao Carlos and she was featured soloist in a Leonard Bernstein Tribute with the Israel Philharmonic. Other highlights include Cunegonde in Candide with the BBC Concert Orchestra and at the Valletta Festival in Malta. She was soloist with the Royal Philharmonic and the Welsh National Opera Orchestra with Carl Davis for a concert tour of the UK and Germany.
A favourite at Toronto’s Opera Atelier, she has sung leading roles in Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, The Abduction from the Seraglio, Der Freischütz, The Magic Flute, the Monteverdi operas, and toured both Lully’s Armide and Persée to the Royal Theatre at Versailles. In recent seasons, she returned to OA for Don Giovanni (2019) and subsequently their acclaimed, digital production of Handel’s The Resurrection in 2021.
As a leading interpreter of modern and contemporary music, Carla performs regularly with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Soundstreams Canada, Music on Main (Vancouver) and Tapestry Opera. She recently toured with the Toronto Symphony in le soleil des eaux by Pierre Boulez, in which “her soprano spoke clearly throughout her range and lent itself beautifully to Boulez’s ebbs and flows, bursting out of the orchestra’s colorful splashes and acting as a shimmering extension of upward-reaching choral waves…” (bachtrack.com). Carla recently joined Soundstreams for Love Songs (2021), a digital stream featuring the music of Claude Vivier and Christopher Mayo which subsequently toured in the U.K. and Germany, and an upcoming release featuring Vivier’s Musik fur das Ende. She premiered Rodney Sharman and Atom Egoyan’s opera Showroom with Continuum Contemporary Music (Toronto, 2023).
With Tapestry, Carla appeared in Tables:Turned, The Shadow and Rocking Horse Winner, and with Soundstreams, in Cage/Saariaho, Reich, Tan Dun and Unsuk Chin concerts. She works closely with composers to develop and premiere new Canadian works, and also sings the music of Crumb, Scelsi, Leroux, Dusapin, Adès and Knussen. Carla is a founding member of the Abney Collective in London (U.K.) premiering new works and has recorded the role of Mara in Philippe Leroux’s new opera L’annonce faite à Marie at IRCAM, Paris.
Other concert performances include Mass in B Minor, Messiah, Carmina Burana, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Five Images after Sappho with the Kitchener-Waterloo and Kingston Symphonies and Pulitzer Prize-winning Paul Moravec’s The Blizzard Voices with Opera Omaha. Carla’s love for chamber music has led to fruitful collaborations with Tafelmusik, the Gryphon Trio, Standing Wave, and the Art of Time Ensemble.
Chandos records recently released a Vaughan-Williams compendium CD featuring Carla. It was nominated for two Grammy Awards (winning for Producer of the Year) and also won a Juno Award for Best Classical Album – Large Ensemble.
August 2024
Not to be altered or copied without permission.
“Huhtanen’s voice is quite breathtaking – the clarity of tone and smoothness of line is matched only by her exquisite acting.”
![“Soprano Carla Huhtanen gave the evening’s most memorable performance. She sang with a soaring, translucent soprano that produced – in its highest register – notes of glistening weightlessness.” [Opera Omaha, The Blizzard Voices] World-Herald, John](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ea12b219c03680a5cc556d0/1588746700192-APP9UYHJ47GY5VEHEDBM/About.CarlaJuly201822AI.jpg)
