The career of exuberant young Finnish-American tenor Miles Mykkanen was launched with a national win of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition in 2019. He has since impressed with a series of important debuts on the world’s major stages, including theMetropolitan Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Canadian Opera Company, and Royal OperaHouse Covent Garden, where The i declared his performance“the most beautiful singing of the evening” and Opera Magazine dubbed it“so striking and brilliant” that “he managed to turn the Steersman into a principal character.”In a pivotal 25/26 season, Mykkanen stars as Sam Clay in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay for the Metropolitan Opera’s opening night gala and house premiere run, conducted by Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Mykkanen returns to the house later this season as The Groom in the first Met production of Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence. Elsewhere, he makes two dual house and role debuts: as Leukippos in Strauss rarity Daphne at Seattle Opera, and as Tamino in Barrie Kosky’s silent film-inspired production of The Magic Flute at LA Opera. He also brings his flexible tenor to Beethoven’s Symphony No.9 with Cleveland Orchestra, led by Franz Welser-Möst, and to Handel’s Messiah with Chicago’s Music of the Baroque, conducted by Dame Jane Glover, University Musical Society in Ann Arbor, and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
He marks his first appearance at the Maastricht Festival in the Netherlands as soloist in a unique Carmina Burana with acclaimed piano duo Lucas and Arthur Jussen, and will be the featured artist in Juilliard’s annual Alice Tully Vocal Recital at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall.
Mykkanen has quickly become the go-to tenor for roles requiring a deft balance of power, lyricism, and dramatic acuity, including a new Barrie Kosky production of Die Fledermaus and Philip Venables’ world premiere We Are The Lucky Ones, both at Dutch National Opera, a new Ted Huffman production of L’incoronazione diPoppea at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and the North American premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence at San Francisco Opera. Additional appearances include Dietote Stadt (Bayerische Staatsoper), Falstaff (Staatsoper Hamburg), Candide (Opéra de Lausanne, Ravinia, Tanglewood), Silent Night (Minnesota Opera), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Opera Philadelphia), and Boris Godunov, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Ariadne auf Naxos, and Wozzeck, all at the Met. His Albert Herring at Chicago Opera Theater was praised by Opera News for“an appealing honeyed sweetness which he employed with intelligence and humor.”Mykkanen has performed under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst (Ariadne auf Naxos and Jenůfa with Cleveland Orchestra), Krzysztof Urbański (Carmina Burana with Atlanta Symphony Orchestra), Manfred Honeck (Bruckner’s Te Deum with Pittsburgh Symphony), Tito Muñoz (Beethoven Symphony No. 9 with Phoenix Symphony), Nathalie Stutzmann (Missa Solemnis with Atlanta Symphony Orchestra), and Leonard Slatkin (West Side Story with New York Philharmonic and Mohammed Fairouz’s Another Time with Detroit Symphony). His in-demand interpretations of Handel’s Messiah have taken him to the symphonies of Atlanta, Kansas City, Indianapolis, and New Jersey, as well as the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center.
