Ryan McKinny Stars in Met Season Opener • September 2023
Tonya and Ryan McKinny arrive at opening night of the Metropolitan Opera season
Photo by Rose Callahan / Last Night at the Met
New York, New York
American bass-baritone Ryan McKinny wowed in a star turn opposite Joyce DiDonato in Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, which opened the Metropolitan Opera’s 23/24 season. Ryan spoke with top-tier outlets about the work, his values-driven collaboration with Equal Justice USA, and an opening-night look inspired by his personal connection to the subject matter.
The Times: Star’s death row friendship adds depth
Nightline: 'Dead Man Walking’ makes a unique debut
The New York Times: ‘Dead Man Walking’ Makes Its Way
Agence France-Presse: An emotional look at death row
Forbes: Ryan McKinny Talks Travel
Opera Now: The Great Connector
Commonweal: An Opera for ‘Life People’
Vogue: Inside the Star-Studded Opening of the Met
The New York Times: A Death Row Opera Goes to Sing Sing, With Inmates Onstage
Critical Acclaim
Ryan McKinny and Joyce DiDonato in Dead Man Walking
Photo by Karen Almond / The Metropolitan Opera
“DiDonato’s diction is pristine, as is McKinny’s — and his warmly robust bass-baritone voice makes De Rocher’s humanity evident from the start.”
–The New York Times
“Joseph, whose growth as a human being is, more or less, at the opera’s center, is a star turn for Ryan McKinny, who delivers his lines with a broad, vibrant baritone and impeccable diction. It is clipped and arrogant at the start, more smooth as he starts to heed Sister Helen and his coatings of defensiveness and fury dissipate. He and DiDonato have wrenching monologues, beautifully written and performed.”
–Bachtrack
“McKinny, from falsetto voice to near-shouting power, walks the balance of claiming his innocence while also needing Sister Helen’s spiritual guidance.”
–Financial Times
“A rugged Ryan McKinny is De Rocher, his bass-baritone edged in darkness.”
–The New Yorker
“As Joseph, McKinny enacts a profound transformation. When we meet him, he is prickly, defensive, and mean. McKinny embodies Joseph’s obstinance (the only thing the prison cannot take away from him) through his muscular baritone, a voice that threatens to leap into the audience and slap you around. But the real brilliance of McKinny’s performance is seeing that tough-guy veneer slowly crack over the course of three hours. The shell fully removed, we’re left with a human being, trembling and frightened before death.”
–Theater Mania
“Ryan McKinny shines. As Joseph De Rocher, he delivered a tremendous performance, providing a perfect counterpoint to DiDonato. His voice has a thick and earthbound quality that suits the character. He sang with a dark, direct, and often jagged line, making him completely unapproachable. When he repeats, “The Truth will set me free,” his voice takes on a thread-like quality that matches DiDonato’s similar prayer-like phrasing. McKinny imbued Joe with greater vulnerability, particularly during the scenes with his mother and brothers, his confession, and the ending. The gruffness of his voice developed into a more delicate tone that coalesced with DiDonato’s. When he utters his last words, in that final moment, McKinny portrays a man full of fear with hushed utterances.
–OperaWire
“McKinny was terrific as De Rocher, lyrical and powerful in what is, after all, the opera’s title role; it was a pleasure to see this fine artist finally getting his Met due.”
–Opera Canada
“[DiDonato and McKinny] are superb acting singers who reach out to the audience as they communicate with one another. While he’s been at the Met before, McKinny has never had a role like this—one that audiences are unlikely to forget. He seemed a powerhouse, both vocally and on screen. The scene between the two singers, as she finally gets him to admit his guilt—which he has adamantly denied for more than three quarters of the opera—is devastating.”
–Broadway World
“The singers were in fine voice and did well by their roles [including] the vocally and physically imposing Ryan McKinny as the murderer Joseph De Rocher.”
–New York Classical Review
“McKinny himself enters, physically terrifying and intolerable. Dressed in a tank vest with blue tracksuit bottoms, his immediate reaction to Sister Helen is distressingly believable as he pushes her away. His baritone voice is full-bodied, but not self-indulgent. De Rocher’s thirst for life was masterfully captured by McKinny’s tenderness and strength of tone, which became especially upsetting to witness. It is this that leads Sister Helen to fight for him.”
–Opera Now
“McKinny was another standout, the vocal embodiment of De Rocher’s vigor and stubbornness. Through the evening, his stubborn denial of guilt crumbled slowly. His journey culminated in a primal cry of agony when Joseph confessed to Sister Helen. By his last words he had revealed the ‘child of God’ that Sister Helen insisted he was.”
–The Girl of the Golden Met
“As Joe, McKinny is [DiDonato’s] equal. Bluster and impotent rage dominate much of the role, and McKinny gives these full value. But in fleeting moments of tenderness, he also reveals the orphaned soul of Joe’s inner child, to heart-breaking effect.”
–Classical Voice North America
“McKinny’s best moment in the evening, exploding in terrified guilt [as he’s] taken away for his execution. De Rocher must be one of opera’s most despicable villains, his guilt never in question, but McKinny turns him into a volcano of anger, frustration, and pity. It’s rewarding to hear a voice with such strength in the role, sailing over Heggie’s orchestration with ease.”
–Parterre Box
“McKinny, buff and tattooed, poignantly captured some of the insecurity underlying De Rocher’s macho posturing and bravado.”
–The Wall Street Journal
“McKinny brought complexity to the role of De Rocher his torso manifestly pumped-up for the assignment. He used rough attacks and the darker colors in his bass-baritone to suggest the character’s barely contained brutality. But for his vulnerable moments he brought out a vein of poignant lyricism, and he delivered De Rocher’s last words – his plea to his victims’ families for forgiveness – with the voice of a child.”
–Musical America
“As Joseph de Rocher, svelte-voiced baritone McKinny gave a powerful and moving performance, capturing a man who, in spite of his sins, wants to die well. McKinny was both the most intruded upon by van Hove’s cameras, and most able to act his way out of that particular corner. As Joseph’s rage gave way to fear and finally, to something like acceptance, McKinny imbued his character with dignity without smoothing over his contradictions.”
–The Observer
“McKinny sang the role of De Rocher with figurative and literal muscular force, his crumbling stubbornness the source of a richly human performance. De Rocher is a fictionalized composite of two real prisoners counseled by Prejean, a bit of trivia that seems to authorize the schism at the heart of his character. In one of his most moving arias, he slides from bellowing reprisals of Sister Helen to a tremulous falsetto to sing the flimsy reassurance that “everything’s gonna be all right.” At the base of Prisoner 95281’s rage is a childlike humanity; and throughout, this precarious balancing act inspired revelatory singing, the surliness of his delivery undermined by a fissure of frailty and mounting fear.”
–The Washington Post