OfficialBiography
A winner of the 2019 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions
Miles Mykkanen has garnered recognition on the world’s concert and operatic stages for his “focused, full-voiced tenor” (The New York Times). Of his performance in the title role of Candide at Tanglewood, it was reported in Opera, “Mykkanen sang and spoke feelingly and superbly, with crystalline diction, a powerful lyric sound seemingly capable of infinite dynamic gradations.”
Miles Mykkanen’s 2022-23 season features three prominent role debuts: he sings Steuermann in Der fliegende Holländer in a return engagement with the Canadian Opera Company; the title role of Albert Herring in his debut at Chicago Opera Theater; and his first Fenton in Falstaff for a company debut at the Staatsoper Hamburg. Other operatic engagements include the tenor’s return to the Metropolitan Opera to cover Tamino in the company’s new production by Simon McBurney of Die Zauberflöte and the title role of Candide with the Opéra de Lausanne. Concert engagements of the season are anchored in Handel’s Messiah with performances at University Musical Society, Ann Arbor and with the Atlanta and New Jersey symphonies.
Last season the Finnish-American tenor appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in no less than three productions: Boris Godunov conducted by Sebastian Weigle, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg led by Sir Antonio Pappano, and Ariadne auf Naxos with Marek Janowski. He made his debut at the Festival d’Aix en Provence in L’incoronazione di Poppea in a new production by Ted Huffman conducted by Leonardo García Alarcón and at Austin Opera in Fidelio led by Timothy Myers. He joined David Danzmayr and the Oregon Symphony for Messiah and presented a Lieder recital program of Beethoven and Schubert under the auspices of the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Highlights of recent seasons include a Metropolitan Opera debut in the company’s new William Kentridge production of Wozzeck led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, a Minnesota Opera debut in the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Silent Night by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell, a debut at the Canadian Opera Company in Robert Lepage’s The Nightingale and Other Short Fables, A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Opera Philadelphia in Robert Carsen’s production conducted by Corrado Rovaris, and Ariadne auf Naxos with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra. One of his signature roles, Candide has been performed at Arizona Opera, Palm Beach Opera, and at the Ravinia and Tanglewood festivals in concert with The Knights.
The tenor’s vibrant concert schedule has included performances of Bruckner’s Te Deum with Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony, the world premiere of Mohammed Fairouz’ Another Time with Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Mozart Requiem with David Danzmayr and the San Antonio Symphony, a New York Philharmonic debut with excerpts from West Side Story conducted by Leonard Slatkin, and Handel’s Messiah with the symphonies of Atlanta, Indianapolis, and New Jersey, with the National Symphony Orchestra at The Kennedy Center, and at the University of Michigan’s Hill Auditorium under the auspices of the University Musical Society.
Miles Mykkanen spent numerous summers at the Marlboro Music Festival where his performances have spanned from art songs of Brahms and Britten to chamber music of Brett Dean with distinguished guest artists Mitsuko Uchida, Malcolm Martineau, Roger Vignoles, and many others. He frequently appears with Steven Blier, Michael Barrett, and the New York Festival of Song and also has collaborated with Juilliard415, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, New World Symphony, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
A champion of new music, he has given the world premieres of Ricky Ian Gordon’s 27, Jack Perla’s Shalimar the Clown, and of Matthew Aucoin’s Crossing at the American Repertory Theatre directed by Diane Paulus. Opera News wrote, “Miles Mykkanen’s work was especially distinctive: his burnished high tenor seemed like the organizing principle around which the other voices cohered.”
The tenor is a 2019 Sara Tucker Study Grant winner, youngARTS Gold winner and the recipient of prizes from the Sullivan Foundation, Toulmin Foundation, Novick Career Advancement Grant, and Juilliard’s Joseph W. Polisi Award. Miles Mykkanen is a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy and earned his Artist Diploma in Opera Studies, along with his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, from The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Cynthia Hoffmann.
Miles Mykkanen is the founder and artistic director of the Emberlight Festival.
