Born in Hiitola, Finland (now in the Republic of Karelia), the eighth of ten children[1] he studied in Lahti and Stockholm, and made his operatic debut in Helsinki in 1960 as Sparafucile.

He sang at the Stockholm Royal Opera in Sweden from 1961 to 1962, before becoming a regularly employed singer at the Deutsche Oper of Berlin in 1962, the same year as his debut at Bayreuth.

He was especially acclaimed as the title character in Boris Godunov, a role he performed 39 times at the Metropolitan Opera between 1974 and 1987,[3] and as Pimen from the same work, as Paavo Ruotsalainen in The Last Temptations, as a Wagner singer who frequently performed at Bayreuth (King Marke, Hunding, Fasolt, Fafner, Hagen (one critic described his Hagen as an "elemental force") and Titurel), as the Commendatore, Sarastro, Dosefei, and Prince Gremin, as King Phillip II, the Grand Inquisitor and, in the later part of his career, the title character in Glinka's Ivan Susanin.

After a recital given by Talvela and Ralf Gothoni in London's Royal Festival Hall in July 1974 (which included Brahms' Vier Ernste Gesänge), a critic with the Financial Times likened Talvela's appearance to an Old Testament prophet and his voice to granite, describing how this Finnish bass giant captivated his audience with thunderstorms, prayers and invocations.

[9] During the last eight years of his life (1981–1989), he worked as a farmer on the Inkilänhovi (Inkilä manor) farm in Juva, Eastern Finland, while continuing his official career as an opera singer.