Miles Mykkanen Stars in Met Opera Season Opener • September 2025
New York, New York
Miles Mykkanen and Andrzej Filończyk in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay / photo by Evan Zimmerman
Kicking off a pivotal 25/26 season, tenor Miles Mykkanen stars as Sam Clay in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay for The Metropolitan Opera’s opening night gala and house premiere run, conducted by Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
This new opera by Mason Bates and Gene Scheer is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Chabon, set shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. The story follows two Jewish cousins – a refugee from Prague and a closeted queer Brooklynite – as they invent an anti-fascist superhero and launch their own comic book series, hoping to recruit America into the fight against Nazism. Mykkanen spoke with news outlets worldwide ahead of his starring role.
Associated Press: Met season opens with new opera starring tenor Miles Mykkanen
National Public Radio: 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay' opens Met Opera season
The New York Times: Fall Arts Preview
Financial Times: The 10 most anticipated and controversial operas of this season
Vulture Magazine: Classical-Music Performances We Can’t Wait to Hear This Fall
Ironwood Globe: Mykkanen opens Metropolitan Opera season
WMNU: Upper Peninsula tenor stars in Metropolitan Opera season opener
Cultured Magazine: The Met Opera Is Combatting Fascists This Season, Both Fictional and All-Too-Real
Critical Acclaim
Miles Mykkanen in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay / photo by Evan Zimmerman
“The pick of the cast is Miles Mykkanen, whose flexible tenor lends lyricism and strength to Sam. He’s heartbreaking in his scenes opposite his lover, and with Joe’s pregnant wife, Rosa.”
The Times
“Mykkanen’s Sam is animated, and is given a dynamic role that he rises to with bright excitement and captivating expressiveness. Bates seems to have the most musical fun in scenes with Sam and Tracy, and their first kiss, shared atop the Empire State Building, is cinematically grand.”
The New York Times
“Sam’s yearnings were sung in Mykkanen’s open, poignant tenor.”
Wall Street Journal
“There was great verve all night…and singers had fine balance and a feeling of exactness in all their music. Mykkanen was a fine complement to Filończyk, his part more lyrical against the forcefulness for Joe. While the latter is thinking of and singing about the past and his family in Europe, the former is thinking and singing about the possibilities of the future. That’s the core of the drama, and the collision of the two produce some marvelous and wrenching moments. There is a beautiful moment when sparks fly between Sam and Tracy in front of a gorgeous animation of lightning striking the Chrysler building.”
New York Classical Review
“All four leads deliver strong vocal performances. Mykkanen uses a wrenching perma-grin to communicate a loneliness that he doesn’t let anyone see.”
Theater Mania
“In Brooklyn, the cousins' improvised studio becomes a workshop of resistance, carried by Mykkanen as Sam Clay – a tenor with that American directness that director Bartlett Sher's pacing requires and that makes Sam's inner rebuttals audible. The fact that Mykkanen switches effortlessly between lyrical lines and American songbook gestures is fitting for a character who balances between Broadway dreams and the game of hide-and-seek with his own identity.”
Die Deutsche Bühne
“There was beautiful music of many kinds – Mykkanen’s role was clearly drawn, and he sang with authority and poise.”
Broadway World
“The explosive ovation that greeted The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay at the Met was well earned. With good English diction, ingers were particularly convincing in establishing their shifting relationship. As Kavalier and Clay Filończyk and Mykkanen had the hard work of carrying the story with vocal lines that were more declamatory than lyrical, but they made their points.”
Classical Voice North America
“Mykkanen projected his clarion tenor, sending words out into the auditorium.”
Musical America
“As the titular heroes, Filończyk and Mykkanen were the pillars on which the entire enterprise rose. Mykkanen’s tenor allowed Clay to be the sunshine of the piece. He brought warmth throughout the initial interactions with Kavalier, which juxtaposed nicely with his more timid interactions with Nelson’s Tracy. The character gets his low point after an FBI raid on a gay party and the tenor’s ensuing lament saw his voice take on a more aggressive quality. He finds a way forward and in the opera’s closing scenes, Mykkanen gets some of the warmest moments onstage as he cares for the young Sarah and then rushes to hug his long-lost cousin. It’s this moment in particular that proved most cathartic, the two heroes of the piece allowed redemption together.”
OperaWire
“The cast is terrific. Tenor Miles Mykkanen gave Sam a boyish innocence, and his bright tenor pinged pleasingly in high-lying passages.”
Financial Times