The Finnish bass Sami Luttinen studied singing at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He began his career by winning the Timo Mustakallio Singing Competition at the Savonlinna Opera Festival in 1993, the year in which he also made his festival debut. From 1995 to 1997 Luttinen had a contract with the Kiel Opera in Germany.

Since 1997 he has been a member of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein’s ensemble in Düsseldorf.

He made his debut at the Finnish National Opera in January 2000 in Don Giovanni. In April 2000 he made his debut at La Scala in Milan in Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos with Giuseppe Sinopoli conducting, and in January 2003 he sang the in the La Scala production of Richard Strauss’ Rosenkavalier with Jeffrey Tate.

2006 Luttinen debuted with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. In May 2008 he returned to Munich as a celebrated Kadmos in the State Opera’s first staged production of Hans Werner Henze’s Die Bassariden. Luttinen’s operatic repertoire includes Seneca (L’Incoronazione di Poppea), Leporello & Il Commendatore (Don Giovanni), Sarastro (Die Zauberflöte), Rocco (Fidelio), Basilio (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), Ramfis (Aida), Filippo II & Il Grande Inquisitore (Don Carlos), Gremin (Eugene Onegin), Pimen (Boris Godunov), Fasolt (Das Rheingold), Hunding (Die Walküre), Hagen (Götterdämmerung), Gurnemanz (Parsifal), Méphistophélès (Faust), Graf Waldner (Arabella), Doktor (Wozzeck) and Claggart (Billy Budd).

In January 2021 he will sing Gurnemanz (Parsifal) at the Royal Danish Opera, København.

In addition to his operatic work, Luttinen appears as a concert soloist throughout Europe. He can frequently be heard in radio broadcast and has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon (Richard Strauss’ operas conducted by Sinopoli). He also appears regularly in song recitals, his repertoire ranging from Romantic German Lieder to French mélodies and Russian and Scandinavian song repertoire. His first solo recording “Songs of Late Summer” with song cycles by Mikko Heiniö and Yrjö Kilpinen appeared in early 2019.