About this Artist
Tenor John Matthew Myers, declared an “artist to watch” by Opera News, has rapidly established himself as one of today's exceptional young voices. He has collaborated with companies such as the New York Philharmonic, Verbier Festival, Santa Fe Opera and LA Opera, and he made his surprise Los Angeles Philharmonic debut in 2017 as Mao in John Adams’s Nixon in China conducted by the composer. Myers’s breakout performance was hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “brightly lighted to match his declaiming voice.” He has garnered acclaim for his “lovely, warm tenor of considerable promise” (Opera News), “insightful and beautifully nuanced performances” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram), and “possesses a voice of vocal grandeur” (The Morning Call).
Myers begins the 2022-2023 season with a stunning summer performance in Britten’s Spring Symphony led by Christopher Bell at the Grant Park Music Festival. He returns to the Metropolitan Opera in coverage for Peter Grimes, and reprises his role of Mao in Nixon in China in his Opera National de Paris debut led by Gustavo Dudamel. This season also marks his debut with Arizona Opera in Tosca, and with both the National Symphony Orchestra and the St Louis Symphony as tenor soloist in Handel's Messiah.
Recently, Myers has covered roles for the Metropolitan Opera in productions of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, Tchaikovsky’s Queens of Spades and Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier previously. The 2021-2022 season included singing the Tenor 1 part in the Metropolitan Opera’s full run of Brett Dean's Hamlet, a debut with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia singing Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, and performing Flavio in Bellini’s Norma with Teatro Regio di Parma in Parma, Italy.
Myers made his New York Philharmonic debut in the 2018-2019 season in the world premiere of David Lang’s fully staged opera, prisoner of the state. Directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer, prisoner of the state was released as an album on Decca Gold in June 2020. That same season, Myers returned to the Los Angeles Philharmonic to participate in a new production of John Cage’s Europeras 1 & 2 in collaboration with The Industry, under the direction of Yuval Sharon. Additional recent performances include Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic, Mozart’s Mass in C Minor with the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 at Carnegie Hall with the Canterbury Choral Society, and a recital at the Kennedy Center as winner of Vocal Arts DC’s 2017 Art Song Competition.
Highlights of Myers’s extensive opera repertoire include Pollione in Norma (LA Opera), Don Jose in Carmen (Music Academy of the West), Cassio in Otello (Portland Summer Fest), Trin in La Fanciulla del West (Santa Fe Opera), Valerio in Mercadante's Virginia (Wexford Festival Opera), Aufide in Rossini’s Moïse et Pharaon (Collegiate Chorale/Carnegie Hall), Steve Wozniak in the workshop of Mason Bates’s The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs (Santa Fe Opera), and Junior/Charlie in Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain (Santa Fe Opera). As a Resident Artist at the Academy of Vocal Arts, Myers sang Duca di Mantua in Verdi’s Rigoletto, Prince Sinodal in Rubinstein’s The Demon, Bacchus in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, and the Prince in Dvorak’s Rusalka. He has collaborated with Long Beach Opera to perform Michael Gordon’s Van Gogh, Gabriela Ortiz’s Camelia la Tejana: Unicamente La Verdad, Stewart Copeland’s Tell-Tale Heart, and a co-production of Tobias Picker’s Thérèse Raquin with Chicago Opera Theater.
Additional concert appearances have included Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with Marcelo Lehninger and Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, Mozart’s Requiem with Nir Kabaretti and Southwest Florida Symphony, opera arias and duets with Allentown Symphony Orchestra alongside soprano Angela Meade, Britten’s War Requiem with the Oratorio Society of New York at Carnegie Hall and in The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music with the Wexford Festival Orchestra, Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Fairfield Chorale, and Brahms’s Liebeslieder Waltzes and other quartets with Performance Santa Fe. Myers has had the pleasure of performing in concert with composer Ricky Ian Gordon on three occasions: at the Chautauqua Institute Music Festival, Opera America's Salon Series: Exploring American Voices, and “Cliburn at the Modern,” the Van Cliburn Foundation's contemporary music series in Fort Worth, TX. He was a soloist with the Mark Morris Dance Group in their performances of The Muir, and with the American Musical Theatre Ensemble in September Songs: The Legacy of Kurt Weill.
Originally from southern California, Myers received his graduate and undergraduate degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, was a Gerdine Young Artist with the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Apprentice Artist with the Santa Fe Opera, an alumnus of the Verbier Festival Academy, and a fellow with the Music Academy of the West. He won Third Prize and the Richard Tauber Prize for the best interpretation of Schubert Lieder at the 2022 Bollinger International Song Competition.