Education
The young Ackté studied singing under her mother's tutelage until 1894.
The young Ackté studied singing under her mother's tutelage until 1894.
Aino Ackté made a successful debut at the Paris Opera in 1897 as Marguerite in Faust, and for the following six years the Opera was to be her artistic home. Here she took the roles of Herwine in the first performance of Alfred Bruneau’s “La Cloche du Rhin” and of Nedda in the French premiere of Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci”. Other parts which she sang at this time at the Opera included Juliette in “Roméo et Juliette”, Elsa in “Lohengrin”, Elisabeth in “Tannhäuser” and Alceste in Gluck’s opera of the same name. She returned as a guest to the Opera in 1910 to take the title role in Massenet’s “Thaïs.”
Ackté was engaged for the 1904–1905 season at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, making her debut once again as Marguerite. She also took the parts of Micaela in “Carmen” and of Eva in “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg”, remaining with the company for the 1905–1906 season. In 1906 she created the title role in Massenet’s oratorio “Marie-Magdeleine” at the Opéra-Comique. She made her Covent Garden debut to acclaim in 1907 as Elsa and followed this with Senta in “Der fliegende Holländerand Eva”. Following the first performance of Richard Strauss’s “Salome”, Ackté became obsessed with the title part, to the extent of visiting the composer to convince him that she would be the pre-eminent interpreter of the role. She did much to justify this claim with her sensational performance in the English premiere of the opera, given at Covent Garden in 1910 under the baton of Sir Thomas Beecham and repeated in 1913. During the first decade of the twentieth century Ackté was also frequently heard in the opera houses of central Europe, singing widely as a guest. She retired from the international stage in 1913, the year in which she gave the first performance of Sibelius’s demanding symphonic poem for soprano and orchestra “Luonnotar” (which received its première in Gloucester).
In her homeland however Ackté remained very busy. Here she exercised great musical influence, managing the Savonlinna Opera Festival between 1912 and 1916 and again in 1930, and becoming director of the Helsinki Opera House between 1938 and 1939. She also wrote three volumes of memoirs (1917, 1925, and 1935). Ackté recorded for several different labels in Paris: Zonophone (1902), Gramophone and Typewriter (1903–1905) and Fonotipia (1905), as well as for Edison in 1913 and for Pathé. Much to our regret, her extant discography amounts to only twenty-two sides.
She was maried twice, had two children by her second husband.