Verismo Welcomes Tenor Miles Mykkanen • February 2025

Worldwide

Verismo is delighted to welcome exuberant young Finnish-American tenor Miles Mykanen to the roster ahead of his title role debut on opening night of the Metropolitan Opera’s 25/26 season.

Miles will star in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Chabon and created by composer Mason Bates and librettist Gene Scheer. Set in 1940s New York City, the opera follows two Jewish cousins – a refugee from wartime Prague and a closeted queer Brooklynite – who team up to create The Escapist, a comic book superhero who takes America by storm as he battles the Nazis and frees the oppressed. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the new Bartlett Sher production.

Mykkanen’s career 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. 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.

Learn more at the newly launched www.milesmykkanen.com.

Photo by Katja Hentschel