Baritone Ville Rusanen is one of Finland’s most renowned opera singers. His versatile vocal expression and charismatic stage presence have brought him to the forefront as a soloist with leading opera houses and orchestras both in Finland and abroad.
At the Finnish National Opera, Rusanen has performed regularly in recent years. His roles have included Pelléas in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, the title role in Britten’s Billy Budd, Petter Kummel in Jaakko Kuusisto’s Ice, and the Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. At the Savonlinna Opera Festival, he has sung title roles in Aulis Sallinen’s Kullervo and Rossini’s The Barber of Seville.
Internationally, Rusanen has appeared at La Scala in Milan, Opéra de Lyon, Dutch National Opera, Scottish Opera, and the Opéra de Luxembourg (Ariadne auf Naxos / Harlequin). As a concert soloist, he has performed in Sydney, London (BBC Proms), Chicago, Bordeaux, Brussels, Tokyo, Bergen, and Zurich, as well as with nearly all major Finnish orchestras.
Rusanen holds a Master of Music degree from the Sibelius Academy, where he studied with Pertti Rusanen, Jorma Hynninen, and Päivi Nisula. He won the men’s category of the Lappeenranta Singing Competition in 2004 and was named Artist of the Year at the Savonlinna Opera Festival in 2014.
In 2020, he released his first solo album Polkuja – Songs from the Finnish Nature with pianist Pami Karvonen, followed by the digital Christmas album Mä kanssa enkelten in 2022, together with Karvonen and trumpeter Jukka Eskola. In 2023, Rusanen performed as a soloist with the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra in Tokyo and sang the title role in Billy Budd at the George Enescu Festival in Romania.
