During the 2025-26 season for HGO, Butler Studio alumnus Ryan McKinny performs the roles of Michele in Il tabarro and the title role in Gianni Schicchi, both part of Il trittico. He also performs the role of Lieutenant Horstmayer in Silent Night. McKinny’s many roles at HGO include Jan in Breaking the Waves (2025); Amfortas in Parsifal (2024); Leporello (2024) and the title role (2019) in Don Giovanni; Jokanaan in Salome (2023); and Gunther in Götterdämmerung (2017). Elsewhere during the season, McKinny stars as Joseph De Rocher in the 25th-anniversary production of Heggie’s Dead Man Walking at San Francisco Opera and makes a role debut as John Proctor in a new Francesca Zambello production of The Crucible at Washington National Opera. McKinny joins Omaha Symphony and Opera Omaha for the title role in Bluebeard’s Castle. He has recently appeared as the title character in Don Giovanni (Washington National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Boston Symphony Orchestra); Escamillo in Carmen (Semperoper Dresden, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Staatsoper Hamburg); De Rocher in Dead Man Walking (Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago); and Mozart’s Figaro (Washington National Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, Seattle Opera, Metropolitan Opera). Other operatic triumphs include Amfortas in Parsifal (Bayreuth Festival, Argentina’s Teatro Cólon, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Dutch National Opera); Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde (Deutsche Oper Berlin, Seattle Opera, Canadian Opera Company, HGO); the title character in The Flying Dutchman (Hamburg State Opera, Milwaukee Symphony, Glimmerglass Festival, Hawaii Opera Theater); Scarpia in Tosca (Los Angeles Opera); Clarence King in Adams’s Girls of the Golden West (Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Opera, Dutch National Opera); and Jokanaan in Salome (Santa Fe Opera). He also created the role of Mac in the world premiere of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s opera, Before It All Goes Dark (2024), recently released on Warner Classics.