Arizona Opera Cast Members & Creatives

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 2016-17 opera season sees Mr. Mykkanen as Belmonte in Die Entführung aus den Serail at Opera Columbus, Tichon in Juilliard's Katya Kabanova, and the title role in a fully-staged production of Candide with the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra. His concert work brought debuts with St. Thomas Church Choir of Men and Boys, Sarasota Orchestra, and saw his return with Steven Blier and the New York Festival of Song. Mr. Mykkanen received prizes from The Gerda Lissner Foundation, Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and was named a 2016 Sullivan Foundation award recipient. 

Mr. Mykkanen’s opera credits include championing new work in addition to leading roles drawn from the classic repertoire. He gave the world premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s Crossing at the American Repertory Theatre directed by Diane Paulus and 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.” He was involved in the world premieres of Ricky Ian Gordon’s Twenty-Seven and Jack Perla’s Shalimar the Clown. Other operatic highlights include performances of Die Zauberflöte, Eugene Onegin, The Barber of Seville, Ariadne auf Naxos, Les mamelles de Tirésias, La traviata, The Marriage of Figaro, La finta giardiniera, Der Kaiser von Atlantis, The Cunning Little Vixen, Dialogues of the Carmelites, Le donne curiose, A Hand of Bridge, and Down in the Valley. The tenor has sung with Wolf Trap Opera Company, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Pine Mountain Music Festival, and Juilliard Opera.

Miles Mykkanen celebrated his Carnegie Hall recital debut last year, and has performed with the New World Symphony, New York Festival of Song, National Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Caramoor Center for Music, Juilliard415, and at the Franz Schubert Institut, Royal Irish Academy of Music, and Interlochen Academy. His rich and varied concert repertoire includes Bach’s Magnificat, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes, Britten’s Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac and Canticle V: The Death of St. Narcissus, Händel’s Messiah, Mozart's Requiem, Schubert’s Auf dem Strom, and Stravinsky’s Cantata.

PBS Great Performances produced a documentary of Renée Fleming’s American Voices Festival in 2015, featuring Miles Mykkanen in a master class with Tony Award-winner Sutton Foster. He also was seen on Medici.tv in Juilliard’s live-stream master classes with Renée Fleming, Emmanuel Villaume, and Fabio Luisi, respectively.

Currently in Juilliard’s esteemed Artist Diploma in Opera Studies program working with Stephen Wadsworth and Brian Zeger, Miles Mykkanen earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the school under the tutelage of Cynthia Hoffmann. He was a 2009 youngARTS Gold Winner in Voice and Juilliard has distinguished the tenor as a winner of the 2016 Juilliard Honors Recital, as a Toulmin Foundation Scholar, and with the Joseph W. Polisi Award, named for the institution’s president, for exemplifying the school’s values of the “artist as citizen.”