Finnish baritone Arttu Kataja studied singing in Helsinki and is a two-time prize winner at the International Mozart Competition in Salzburg. Since 2006, he has been a permanent member of the ensemble at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, where he has already sung the major Mozart roles in his repertoire. He has also appeared as Peter Besenbinder/Hänsel und Gretel, Marcello/La Bohème and Sharpless/Butterfly, among others. In addition to Daniel Barenboim, his partners at the podium in Berlin have included Philippe Jordan, Andris Nelsons, Sir Simon Rattle and Omer Meir Wellber.  

Guest engagements have taken him to the Theater an der Wien, the Théâtre du Capitole, the Teatro Municipal in Santiago de Chile, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, the Savonlinna Opera Festival, the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki, the Tampere Opera and to Japan, together with Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin State Opera.

His busy concert schedule includes many national and international appearances. He has worked repeatedly with René Jacobs in concerts and recordings with the Akademie für Alte Musik, the RIAS Kammerchor, the Freiburger Barockorchester, the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra and the Kammerorchester Basel, among others, as well as with Frieder Bernius and the Musikpodium Stuttgart. With his wide-ranging repertoire, he has also performed with the German Symphony Orchestra (Rinaldo Alessandrini), the International Bach Academy Stuttgart (Hans-Christoph Rademann), the Zurich Sing-Akademie (Florian Helgath), the Dresden Philharmonic (Michael Sanderling), the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra (Hartmut Haenchen), the NDR Radio Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Andrew Manze), the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (James Gaffigan), the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra (Andris Poga) and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (Nicholas Collon).

Recent highlights include the release of his latest CD with mezzo-soprano Katharina Kammerloher and pianist Eric Schneider featuring Mahler's songs from ‘Des Knaben Wunderhorn’, Brahms' Requiem at the Rheingau Music Festival, Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust with the Coro e Orquestra Gulbenkian in Lisbon under Hannu Lintu, Bruckner's Mass No. 1 with the RIAS Chamber Choir at the Philharmonie Berlin, a tour of the Netherlands with the Nederlands Kamerkoor performing the Christmas Oratorio, B' Rock and conducted by Peter Dijkstra, and Leoš Janáček's ‘The Excursions of Mr. Brouček’ with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. On the opera stage, he made his role debut as Germont in Verdi's La Traviata at the Tampere Opera in Finland and, at his home theatre in Berlin, sang the title role in Le Nozze di Figaro and Capulet in Roméo et Juliette under Giuseppe Mentuccia.

In 2025/26, he will perform for the first time with Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations / La Capella Nacional de Catalunya in San Sebastián, Paris and Barcelona with Mendelssohn's Walpurgisnacht, and will once again be heard with René Jacobs at the Forum Musicum Festival in Wroclaw with Scarlatti's oratorio Cain, Overo Il primo omicidio. He has also been re-invited by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra for another work by Jean Sibelius, The Origin of Fire, which he will sing this time under Karina Canellakis. At the turn of the year, he will sing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Dresden Philharmonic under the baton of Sakari Oramo. In 2026, he will embark on an extensive tour of the Netherlands with the Noord Nederlands Orkest under the baton of Hartmut Haenchen, performing the St Matthew Passion, and during the festival season he will once again be a guest at the Rheingau Music Festival with Mendelssohn's Paulus under Frieder Bernius.
On the opera stage, he will be heard for the first time as Posa in Don Carlos in Tampere, and at his home theatre in Berlin he will sing, among other roles, the Heerrufer in Lohengrin, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly and Capulet in Roméo et Juliette.

Arttu Kataja's recordings include:
Winterreise (Alba 2022) and Serious Songs (Alba 2020) with pianist Pauliina Tukiainen, Beethoven: Missa Solemnis (Carus, 2019), St Matthew Passion (Harmonia Mundi, 2013)

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