Critical acclaim of Ryan’s performances, interviews & press features
The glowing menace of the mushroom cloud mixed genius with death. John Adams’ “Doctor Atomic” shows the father of nuclear weapons in all his complexity; the charismatic leader, the cold calculation and the horror at what his work had wrought. The dramatic piece opens for the first time in the state of the bomb’s gestation and birth at the Santa Fe Opera on...
When Leonard Bernstein’s Mass had its world premiere in 1971, the world was, to put in bluntly, a mess. The war in Southeast Asia was still going strong, political assassinations had shocked the world, popular culture was shifting radically and civil rights were becoming more and more important. In other words, it was a time not unlike our own. Critics didn’t...
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Los Angeles-born and Juilliard-trained baritone Ryan McKinny has made Houston his home. A+C music writer Cortney Jacobs caught up with the rising singer and Houston Grand Opera Studio alum the day before he started rehearsals at HGO for Rigoletto, which runs Jan. 24-Feb. 9. McKinny continues his HGO roll with Das Rheingold April 11-26, followed...
Houston Grand Opera’s audiences will soon be hearing a lot from bass-baritone Ryan McKinny. He plays one of the most powerful roles in Italian opera, the tormented jester at the center of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” beginning Friday. The company will bring him back in April for double duty, as the charismatic toreador Escamillo in Georges...
Ryan McKinny seems an ideal fit for the Wagner bass-baritone roles he is pursuing — Amfortas, the Dutchman. In fact, he has spent a long time trying to figure out what his voice is, and what it isn’t. “When you enter competitions in your early twenties,” he says, “if you are a lyric soprano or Rossini tenor, I think you kind of understand...
