Strauss, sex and selfies: Karita Mattila on how to be an opera star
The Finnish soprano talks to Neil Fisher about ageism in the industry, playing a monstrous mother in Covent Garden’s Elektra and her new single life
For one of Karita Mattila’s signature operatic characters, life is an endless parade of identities, performances, lovers. That heroine is Janacek’s Emilia Marty, a 337-year-old diva kept young through a magic formula, living through whole eras of history while everyone else withers and dies.
And Mattila? The Finnish soprano is chameleonic and charismatic enough to have more than a touch of Marty herself — but if Janacek’s chilly artiste is raddled with ennui, Mattila is a fireball of energy. Unlike the forever young Emilia, she is happy to age, and rather disgracefully. Her biography on Twitter/X — she joined the social network in 2018, shortly after divorcing her husband of nearly 30 years — attests to that: “I sing. I coach. Loving a good laugh
