Martti Talvela; Father Figure of Finnish Opera

Martti Talvela, the 6-foot-7, 300-pound basso whose rich voice and pliant tones brought him acclamation in the capitals of the world, most often in the role of “Boris Godunov,” has died of a heart attack, Finnish newspapers reported Monday. He was 54.

The reports said Talvela, a frequent performer at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and here two years ago as King Marke in the Music Center Opera production of “Tristan und Isolde,” died Saturday night while celebrating a daughter’s wedding at his farm in Juva, Finland, about 150 miles northeast of Helsinki.

Newspapers reported that Talvela died of a heart attack shortly after dancing with his newly married youngest daughter.

Audiences at the Savonlinna Opera Festival on Sunday were told of his death by the festival’s artistic director, Walton Gronroos, who said the father figure of Finnish opera had died. Talvela, considered a national treasure to many, had become the best-known Finn in musical circles since composer Jean Sibelius.

He was artistic director of the Savonlinna festival in eastern Finland from 1972 to 1979, which he elevated to a major international opera event.

And he had just recently agreed to become the director of the Finnish National Opera in 1992.

Roger Lindberg, a member of the committee to select a new director, described Talvela’s death as a “catastrophe” for the National Opera and said “it will be very difficult to find a suitable new director.”

Talvela, a schoolteacher by profession, won a national lieder competition in 1960, the year he began his international career. He made his operatic debut at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm in 1961 as Sparafucile in “Rigoletto” and the following year joined the Bayreuth Festival at the invitation of Wieland Wagner, composer Richard Wagner’s grandson.

His American debut came in Cleveland in 1968 in Verdi’s “Requiem.” His immense voice and size made him a logical “Boris,” and he appeared in 1974 at the Metropolitan in the first of many performances in Modest Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov.” The New York Times once called him “the Boris of his generation.”

Talvela’s Wagner repertoire came to include Gurnemanz in “Parsifal,” King Henry in “Lohengrin” and Hagen in “Gotterdammerung.” He also recorded extensively.

Writing of Talvela’s portrayal of King Marke in the 1987 Music Center “Tristan,” Times critic Martin Bernheimer said that he “exuded towering dignity.”