Miles Mykkanen

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 performances in Eugene Onegin at the Juilliard School, Opera News wrote, “Mykkanen was a knockout as Lensky. The lyric intensity of his singing made each moment count, and the duel- scene aria was a stretch of sheer vocal gold.”

The 2018-19 season sees Miles Mykkanen making debuts at Minnesota Opera as Lt. Sprink in the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Silent Night by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell, at Opera Philadelphia as Flute in Robert Carsen’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream conducted by Corrado Rovaris, and with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra singing Brighella in fully-staged performances of Ariadne auf Naxos.  The tenor joins the roster of the Bayerische Staatsoper covering the role of Admète in Gluck’s Alceste in a new production by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui led by Antonello Manacorda.  On the concert stage, Messiah brings the tenor together with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra at The Kennedy Center, and to the University of Michigan’s Hill Auditorium under the auspices of the University Musical Society.

Miles Mykkanen was heard throughout the 2017-18 season in the title role of Bernstein’sCandide with performances at Arizona Opera, Palm Beach Opera, and at Tanglewood with The Knights.  He bowed as Peter Quint in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw for Opera Columbus in a new production by Stephen Wadsworth and the music of Stravinsky served the tenor’s debut at the Canadian Opera Company in Robert Lepage’s The Nightingale and Other Short Fables.  The tenor made a New York Philharmonic debut in a program of excerpts from West Side Story conducted by Leonard Slatkin and joined the Bard Music Festival for performances of Moniuszko’s Halka and Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette with Leon Botstein conducting the American Symphony Orchestra.

Miles Mykkanen spent the past two 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.

Additional highlights include performances of Handel’s Messiah with the New Jersey Symphony and Indianapolis Symphony, Verdi’s Otello with Robert Spano leading the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and Bernstein’s Songfest with his frequent collaborators, Steven Blier, Michael Barrett, and the New York Festival of Song.  He also has collaborated with Juilliard415, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, New World Symphony, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society,andwith members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

Opera credits include performances of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail with Opera Columbus, Janáček’s Káťa Kabanová in a new Stephen Wadsworth production at Juilliard conducted by Anne Manson, as well as Die Zauberflöte, Eugene Onegin, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Les mamelles de Tirésias, La finta giardiniera, Der Kaiser von Atlantis, The Cunning Little Vixen, and Dialogues of the Carmelites.  Miles Mykkanen is a champion of new music and has given the world premieres of Ricky Ian Gordon’s Twenty-Seven, 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.”