Curriculum Vitae
Helena Juntunen is 28-year old alumni of Sibelius-Academy. She has also studied Lied with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Hartmut Höll and Mitsuko Shirai and attended lessons of Renata Scotto and Jeffrey Goldberg.
At the various Finnish provencial operas she has sung the parts of Siebel in Faust, Giannetta and Adina in L'elisir d'amore, Frasquita in Carmen, Mimi and Musetta in La Boheme and Gilda in Rigoletto. In Finnish National Opera she has appeared as Waldvögel in Siegfrid, Zdenka in Arabella and Madama Cortese in Il viaggo a Reims directed by Dario Fo; which role she also sang in Genova. At the Savonlinna Opera Festival Juntunen has sung the parts of Papagena in Zauberflöte, Kaisa in Juha ,highly acclaimed Marguerite in Faust and Liu in Turandot -the role she will repeat again next Summer.. She also took part of Hilda in Rautavaara opera Aleksis Kivi during the Savonlinna Opera Festival guest production in Cosenza, Italy.
During the season 2003-4 Juntunen has appeared as Gounods Marguerite in Grand Opera of Connecticut and she made her debut in a Lied-recitall in Carnegie Hall and in Tokio. She has been heard in Dresden Semperoper singing the role of Pamina, in Antwerben and Gent singing Zdenka of Arabella and as Madama Cortese in Finnish National Opera.
Juntunen has sang with many orchestras conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Leif Segerstam, Osmo Vänskä and Mikko Franck.
Juntunen has won the first prize in Timo Mustakallio singing competition in 2000, first prize in Tampere grand prix in 2001 and first prize in Lappeenranta singing competition in 2002.
Her future engagements will take her to Brussels, Nantes, Minnesota, Nizza, Vienna and Aix-en-Provence.