Miles Mykkanen

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 the Metropolitan Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Canadian Opera Company, and Royal Opera House 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.”

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 di Poppea at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and the North American premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence at San Francisco Opera.

Additional appearances include Die tote 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 with Cleveland Orchestra), Krzysztof Urbański (Carmina Burana with Atlanta Symphony Orchestra), Manfred Honeck (Bruckner’s Te Deum with Pittsburgh Symphony), 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. This season, he debuts with Phoenix Symphony in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Music Director Tito Muñoz amidst returns to the Cleveland Orchestra for staged performances of Jenůfa with Welser-Möst and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with Music Director Nathalie Stutzmann.

Mykkanen’s compelling blend of charisma and honesty has engaged audiences in cabaret performances at Joe’s Pub, Neue Galerie’s Cabaret at Café Sabarsky, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he curated Lavender Nights, a live installation of queer anthems. He honed his artistic flexibility in explorations of chamber music and art song with legendary musicians like Mitsuko Uchida, Malcolm Martineau, Roger Vignoles, and Steven Blier at the Marlboro Music Festival, New York Festival of Song, New World Symphony, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. 

A proud Yooper from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Mykkanen leveraged his pandemic downtime to create community around the arts in his hometown of Ironwood. As founding Artistic Director of the Emberlight Festival, he has built a formidable board, raising $750,000 in a county where the annual median income is $29,000. Emberlight has now produced 119 individual events – including a film festival with entries from 83 countries, live performances of chamber music, cabarets, and plays, a photography show and public art installations, and performance infusions featuring regional artists in everything from Ojibwe basket weaving to wool waulking. More than 70% of those events have been free to attend, ensuring that the arts are accessible to everyone in the rural region.

Mykkanen is grateful for the support he has received from the Richard Tucker Foundation, Sullivan Foundation, Toulmin Foundation, YoungArts, and the Juilliard School, where he received a Novick Career Advancement Grant and the Joseph W. Polisi Award. He is a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy and earned his BM, MM, and Artist Diploma in Opera Studies from Juilliard under the tutelage of Cynthia Hoffmann.