Biography

Baritone Peter Mattei has emerged as one of the world's major Mozart singers, with appearances at top houses in Sweden, around Europe, and in the U.S. He has also appeared in several films. Mattei was born in Piteå, in far northern Sweden, on June 3, 1965. He grew up in nearby Luleå. Mattei attended Stockholm's Royal Academy of Music and its Opera University (Operahögskolan), and in 1990, he made his operatic debut at the Drottningholm Castle Theater as Nardo in Mozart's La finta giardiniera. His album debut came in 1992 on a recording of Maurice Duruflé's Requiem on the BIS label. Mattei appeared in Antonio Salieri's rarely performed Falstaff in 1992 and played Figaro in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro for the first time during the 1994-1995 season at the Royal Stockholm Opera. In 1993, he appeared in a Swedish made-for-television film, The Backers, which was directed by Ingmar Bergman. By the late '90s, Mattei was known as one of European opera's rising Mozart singers. He sang Don Giovanni in Mozart's opera at the Gothenburg Opera House in 1994-1995 and was cast in the same role at the Scottish Opera in the autumn of 1995. He later returned to that house to sing Guglielmo in Così fan tutte. Mattei's repertory is not restricted to Mozart: other common roles for him have included Lionel in Tchaikovsky's Joan of Arc, Harlekin in Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos, and another Figaro, this one in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia. In 2002, Mattei made his debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera, and he has since made frequent guest appearances with that company and has been seen in its internationally distributed television broadcasts. Mattei has been active in concert music as well as opera, with Bach's St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244, and St. John Passion, BWV 245, among his specialties. Mattei has appeared on numerous operatic and choral recordings, and in the U.S., he won a Grammy Award in 2002 as part of the cast in a recording of Berlioz's Les Troyens. He has also released various albums under his name, mostly on the BIS label. On that label, in 2019, he issued a recording of Schubert's Die Winterreise, D. 911. Mattei returned in 2022 on BIS with a recital of songs by Allan Pettersson, backed by pianist Bengt-Åke Lundin. By that time, he had appeared on some 45 recordings. ~ James Manheim, Rovi