Camilla Nylund – Forging your own path
Camilla Nylund, chair of the jury for June 2027’s Mirjam Helin Competition, wants to help young singers make their international breakthroughs. “I want to give others what I was given,” explains the star soprano.
Opera singer Camilla Nylund has achieved what few others have, forging a 30-year career performing on the stages of Europe’s most esteemed opera houses.
Nylund still remembers her big epiphany.
She was 20 years old and in Salzburg. Her singing teacher, Hungarian Eva Illes,suggested that the young student sing Toivo Kuula’s Tuijotin tulehen kauan (‘I stared long into the fire’).
“It has this monumental climax,” Nylund recalls by video call from Milan. “I remember when I sang it for the first time. I felt like this was the start of something big!”
The experienced singing teacher taught the young soprano how to use her whole body as an instrument and how to produce a high, strong sound.
It was only in her twenties that Nylund found her own path, and for that she is still grateful to her teacher.
Nylund grew up in the western Finnish city of Vaasa, where even from a young age, she was a keen choir singer. She started private singing lessons at 14 years old at the Kuula Institute. Coming from a musical family, “you have a wonderful voice,” was a familiar refrain from those around her. In the summers she travelled to Rome and Vienna to take singing courses.
Nylund studied for a year at Turku Conservatory before being admitted to Salzburg’s prestigious Mozarteum University. She stayed there for seven years, training her voice in the university’s Lied and opera classes.
Even when she was a student, Nylund knew that opera hall stages were where she wanted to be: “the stage is where I really feel at home.” But getting there was not easy, she explains.
“Finding the right pathway and the right singing teacher for you is very tricky for classical singers.”
Few of her fellow students from her days in Salzburg have been able to make a living as singers, with competition for roles becoming tougher over the years.
“I’ve been pretty fortunate.”
Nylund’s own career quickly took off internationally at the start of the new millennium.
Camilla Nylund”Finding the right pathway and the right singing teacher for you is very tricky for classical singers. I’ve been pretty fortunate.”
It was at this point that a new singing teacher, Irmgard Boas, proved invaluable. They practised together in Dresden, Germany, where Nylund also found her trusted pianist, Jobst Schneiderat.
As early as 2003, Nylund began singing tougher and more dramatic roles, which proved well suited to her lyric-dramatic voice type as a soprano.
Her own pathway began opening up.
Nylund’s international breakthrough came with the title role in Richard Strauss’s Salome at the Cologne Opera.
This vocally and physically demanding role opened up the door to the stages of some of the world’s biggest opera houses: from the Vienna State Opera to the Paris Opera and New York’s Metropolitan Opera in the role of the Marschallin in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier.
Camilla Nylund“Surrounded by fierce competition, you have to find your own path, somewhere where you’re unbeatable.”
Major soprano roles in works by Richard Wagner at Germany’s Bayreuth Festival have also been particular highlights of her career.
If anyone knows what it takes to keep your place on the stages of some of the world’s most prestigious opera houses, it’s Nylund.
“Surrounded by fierce competition, you have to find your own path, somewhere where you’re unbeatable.”
This message is one she has been sharing as a singing teacher and one of the leading figures at the Mirjam Helin Academy since last autumn.
With the academy’s new two-year training programme, the Finnish Cultural Foundation seeks to support gifted Finnish singers in starting their international careers and making their breakthroughs.
While many young singers are keen to pursue classical singing as a career, if they are to build an international career, more and more special skills are required.
Classical music and opera have transformed into a business, states Nylund, with visibility on social media also becoming more important to a singer’s career.
If young singers are to find what makes them unbeatable and special, they need people to help them, Nylund believes. “This is what we offer at the Mirjam Helin Academy. That person might be a pianist-coach, a singing teacher or someone else.”
Nylund’s own aim is to use her role as singing teacher to help each young person find their own voice as a singer.
Camilla NylundIf young singers are to find what makes them unbeatable and special, they need people to help them, Nylund believes. “This is what we offer at the Mirjam Helin Academy. That person might be a pianist-coach, a singing teacher or someone else.”
“I want to give others what I was given.”
According to Nylund, for those offered a place, the academy is “like a small-scale lottery win.” Does Finland lack these promising singers of the future or ambitious young vocalists undaunted by the fierce international competition to reach the top?
Nylund believes that Finland absolutely has the talent, but the key issue is finding these promising singers early enough.
“We want to ensure they can receive that training and additional support.”
Looking to the future, Nylund will also be involved in the Mirjam Helin Competition taking place in June 2027, having just been named chair of the international jury.
Going forward, the competition, which provides many young singers with an important springboard into an international career, will be held every three years.
Nylund hopes that many young singers from different countries will apply for the 2027 competition.
“And, of course, I also hope that we will see some Finnish singers in the final.”
She also encourages young vocalists looking to progress in their careers to take risks sometimes and test their own boundaries.
This is exactly what she did when making her debut as Salome in the early 2000s. “No, don’t sing Salome, it’ll be the end of your career,” she was warned.
“But I felt that it was a role that could open doors, and that’s exactly what it did.”
Nylund’s own path took her to Austria and Central Europe, after finding the doors to Helsinki’s prestigious Sibelius Academy closed to her when she was 18.
“Of course, back then not getting a place felt absolutely terrible,” she admits.
But she now believes that it was the best thing that could have happened, leading her to instead settle in Dresden, close to many of Europe’s key opera cities.
Ultimately it was in these opera circles that she also found her husband, Dutch tenor Anton Saris.
“Without him, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” Nylund says.
Der Ring des Nibelungen and the role of Brünnhilde recently brought her to Milan, where she performed in Wagner’s magnum opus at La Scala in March. April is set to bring a Lied concert at Tokyo’s Spring Festival, while the summer will see her return to Bayreuth Festival and the role of Brünnhilde.
“After that, I’ll have sung all the roles I wanted to at Bayreuth.”
As a singer, one must also have dreams, she believes. Despite her long career, Nylund still wants to test her own boundaries and keep moving forwards.
Her next goal is to develop her Italian repertoire.
Mirjam Helin competition:
- The tenth Mirjam Helin Singing Competition takes place 5–17 June 2027 in Turku, Finland
- Preliminary rounds 7–9 June at Sigyn Hall
- Semi-finals 11–12 June at Music Centre Fuuga
- Final 17 June at Music Centre Fuuga Sales of ticket packages will start in April 2026, with individual tickets going on sale in October 2026.
