Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho\u2019s \u201cInnocence.\u201d<\/a> He plays the Bridegroom, a part he first sang in 2024 when San Francisco Opera gave the work\u2019s U.S. premiere.<\/p>\nA role tailor-made for Mykkanen<\/p>\n
Mykkanen had sung at the Met before, mostly attracting little attention in small parts, though his haunting rendition of the Holy Fool in Mussorgsky\u2019s \u201cBoris Godunov\u201d in 2021 drew critical acclaim.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut this season is so ideal,\u201d Mykkanen said. \u201cAll of a sudden my schedule came together, and I thought, my God, where did this all come from.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the Met was casting \u201cKavalier & Clay,\u201d it was Michael Heaston, the artistic administrator, who thought of Mykkanen for the role of Sammy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI first became acquainted with Miles when he was still a student at Juilliard, and he immediately impressed me,\u201d Heaston said. \u201cHe is a singer who can straddle genres, that rare artist who can sing a heartfelt operatic aria in one moment and then turn on a dime to a classic tune from the American Songbook.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I looked at Mason\u2019s score and considered the vocal and acting demands alike, it seemed tailor-made for Miles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mary Birnbaum, who taught Mykkanen acting at Juilliard, said she\u2019s not surprised at his sudden rise to prominence.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly it\u2019s what I thought he would do all along,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s got a very American sound, and it\u2019s appealing and it\u2019s lush. But also he\u2019s bold as an actor \u2026 and he makes material look better for being in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mykkanen on playing characters with something to hide<\/p>\n
By coincidence, both his roles this season are people who have something to hide. \u201cThey are characters with two huge secrets that are kind of gnawing away at them,\u201d Mykkanen said.<\/p>\n
In Sammy\u2019s case, it\u2019s his sexuality and ambivalence about his attraction to actor Perry Bacon.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a gay man myself, it\u2019s been really rewarding for me to be working on this role, thinking back to my coming out process 20 years ago now,\u201d Mykkanen said. \u201cSammy wants to believe there\u2019s a future for him, but he keeps struggling and wondering if the world will ever get past its prejudice and accept him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cInnocence\u201d deals with the lingering effects of a school shooting 10 years later, and as secrets are peeled away, the Bridegroom\u2019s role in the horrific events is gradually exposed.<\/p>\n
Mykkanen relishes the very different musical challenges the two roles provide. Saariaho\u2019s score for \u201cInnocence,\u201d he said is composed with a kind of \u201cmathematical\u201d precision. \u201cWhen I first cracked it open, it was overwhelming because of the time signatures, the key signatures. You\u2019re trying to figure out, what was she thinking, how do you put this all together?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKavalier & Clay,\u201d written in a style that uses what Bates calls \u201csymphonic electronica,\u201d has been easier to learn. \u201cI almost feel it\u2019s starting to carve a new genre in opera,\u201d Mykkanen said. \u201cSomething American opera has been trying to find in the last decade or so. \u2026 I don\u2019t want to stay to say it\u2019s musical theater, but at times it\u2019s very colloquial.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still calling Michigan’s upper peninsula home<\/p>\n
Mykkanen grew up in the remote Ironwood region of Michigan\u2019s Upper Peninsula, where both his parents were high school band directors. Though he displayed a talent for singing at a young age, it was show music rather than opera that inspired him. When his parents found him a classical voice teacher, \u201cFor me it was a means to an end, to develop my voice so I could sing on the Broadway stage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though his career now takes him all over the U.S. and to Europe, Mykkanen still calls the Ironwood region home. In 2019, he launched an arts festival called Emberlight that has grown into a two-month summer program of live performance, film, art shows and talkbacks with visiting artists. When he\u2019s not on site he handles logistics remotely and also relies heavily on volunteers.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust being the person who with a lot of other people behind me brings art to this region which is rural and remote \u2026 It\u2019s been one of the big blessings of my life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
And when he isn\u2019t performing, he returns. \u201cI have a room in my parents\u2019 basement where I store my stuff,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I\u2019m between contracts I come back here and stay with my mom and dad. \u2026 I\u2019lll call them from Amsterdam and say \u2018OK, what are we having for dinner next Tuesday when I land.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKavalier & Clay\u201d runs through Oct. 11. Also starring are baritone Andrzej Filo\u0144czyk as Joe; soprano Lauren Snouffer as his sister, Sarah; soprano Sun-Ly Pierce as Rosa Saks, and baritone Edward Nelson as Perry Bacon. Met music director Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin<\/a> conducts the production directed by Bartlett Sher.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Miles Mykkanen grew up wanting to sing and dance on Broadway, but he was turned down by the musical theater programs he applied to for college. So he had to \u201csettle\u201d for studying opera at the Juilliard School at Lincoln Center. \u201cAt 18, when your sights are set on 42nd Street […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2040265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[377463,377457,377459,377460,377462,377456,365926,377461,377458,344544],"class_list":["post-2040264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-gene-scheer","tag-joe-kavalier","tag-juilliard-school","tag-kavalier-clay","tag-leading-role","tag-mason-bates","tag-metropolitan-opera","tag-michael-heaston","tag-miles-mykkanen","tag-opera"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Met-season-opens-with-new-opera-based-on-Michael-Chabon.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2040264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2040265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2040264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2040264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2040264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}