Matti Salminen is a Finnish operatic bass singer, who has sung at the most important opera houses of the world, including the Metropolitan and Bayreuth Festival. Salminen is distinguished by an imposing figure and height; a cavernous, heavy, dark voice with a huge upper register; and an expressive face. According to one reviewer, in his prime Salminen was "... simply the largest bass voice in captivity. It is not just its roar in powering over Wagner's maximum orchestra, but the way he carves the sonority and forms the color." Salminen has a special gift for playing menacing, threatening characters. He performed as Fafner and Hagen in the PBS video broadcast Ring Cycle from the Metropolitan Opera, for the largest viewing-audience of the Ring in history. He sang in the premiere of Sallinen?s Kuningas Lear in 2000, and Jukka Linkola's Robin Hood in 2011. Salminen has a contract at the Zurich Opera, and he also frequently performs in his native Finland. At the Bayreuth Festival he first appeared in 1976 [More at Wikipedia]

July 7th, 1945 in Turku (Age 79)