Ryan McKinny

In the 2008/09 season, bass-baritone RYAN MCKINNY (Creon, Messenger, Tiresias) sings the roles of Creon, Tiresias, and the Messenger in these performances of Stravinsky’s Oedipus rex with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in his final concerts as Music Director. He will also make his debut with Utah Symphony & Opera as Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro and will be heard in recital at Aspen Music Festival. McKinny was recently heard at Houston Grand Opera as Don Pedro in Béatrice et Bénédict and Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
 
McKinny will begin the 2009/10 season at Houston Grand Opera as the Herald in Lohengrin conducted by Patrick Summers. He will then be heard at LA Opera in two new roles: Leone in Handel’s Tamerlano with Plácido Domingo and Don Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia. In the spring of 2010, McKinny will make his European operatic debut as Hercules in Peter Konwitschny’s new production of Alceste for Oper Leipzig, as well as his debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin as Escamillo in Carmen. Future seasons will see McKinny again in Houston, as well as with other companies.
 
Recent seasons have included performances of Sam in Un ballo in maschera and Flint in Billy Budd at Houston Grand Opera, as well as Montano in Otello and Ein Bedentier in Ullmann’s Der zerbrochene Krug, both under the baton of James Conlon for his debut with LA Opera. He was seen at Wolf Trap Opera as Barone di Kelbar in Verdi’s early opera Un giorno di regno and Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro with Berkshire Opera. In concert, he was heard as bass-baritone soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the National Symphony Orchestra and Zuniga in a concert performance of Carmen with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.
 
An alumnus of the Houston Grand Opera Studio, McKinny has performed a number of roles on the mainstage at HGO, including Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro, Ramfis in Aida, Peter in Hänsel und Gretel, Masetto in Don Giovanni, Zuniga in Carmen, and Pietro in Simon Boccanegra. In 2006, he sang the role of Der Tod in Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis conducted by Conlon with the Jewish Community Center of Houston (in partnership with Houston Grand Opera). He also previously sang this role with Conlon at Chicago’s Ravinia Festival and at the Spoleto Festival in Italy. In the summer of 2006, McKinny sang Le Gouverneur in Rossini’s Le comte Ory and Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro at Wolf Trap Opera.
 
McKinny made his Carnegie Hall debut in December 2004 in Handel’s Messiah with the Musica Sacra Orchestra. At the Aspen Music Festival in 2007, he sang his first performance of Winterreise accompanied on the piano by Richard Bado. He has also been heard as soloist in the Mozart, Brahms, and Fauré Requiems as well as Vaughan Williams’ Dona nobis pacem. Additionally, he sang the world premiere of Henrik Strindberg’s I Thought Someone Came By at New York’s Alice Tully Hall in 2004.
 
A graduate of the Juilliard School, McKinny represented the United States in the 2007 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, where he was a finalist in the Rosenblatt Recital Song Prize. He was also a Grand Finalist in the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and was the third place winner in the 2005 Houston Grand Opera Eleanor McCollum Competition.