Tommi Hakala, BBC Singer of the World in 2003, graduated from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and studied in Karlsruhe before starting his career as a baritone in Germany and his native Finland. A regular guest of the Finnish National Opera and the Savonlinna Opera Festival, he has held positions at the Nuremberg Opera (1998–2001) as well as the Leipzig Opera (2001-2004) and is now working internationally as a freelance artist.

Guest engagements since 2006 have included several concerts in Europe and the USA, his US-debut with Le nozze di Figaro in San Francisco and Faust at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Don Giovanni in Turku, Danilo/Die lustige Witwe with the Vlaamse Opera as well as in Bern (2006/07), Carmen at the Finnish National Opera, Don Carlos  in Copenhagen and another Figaro production in Atlanta. His Kullervo recording, together with Leif Segerstam and Soile Isokoski, was awarded the Diapason d’or in 2008.

Mr. Hakala has been reinvited to the Metropolitan Opera to sing La bohème in December 2008. In addition to several concerts, further projects until 2010 include The Merry Widow and Yevgeni Onegin in Helsinki, Posa/Don Carlo in Tampere Ford/Falstaff at the Opéra du Rhin as well as in Helsinki, l’Elisir d’amore in Amsterdam, a new Onegin production at the Vlaamse Opera, Euryanthe in Toulouse, and Tannhäuser in Copenhagen.
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