Michael McCown
tenor
© Barbara Aumüller
The American tenor Michael McCown, a popular member of the ensemble at Oper Frankfurt since 2001, has built up a repertoire of more than 100 roles during his career. During the 2025/26 season roles include Horace Adams in Peter Grimes, the Idiot, 3rd Angel / John & Altoum in new productions of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, Benjamin's Written on Skin & Puccini's Turandot and the Bogus Assistant in Weill's The Tsar wants his Photograph Taken. Last season he repeated his wonderful portrayals of Leonard (Nielsen's Masquerade), Paisi (Tchaikovsky's Sorceress - get the DVD!), Borsa (Rigoletto), Happy Prisoner / Sapkin (Janáček's From the House of the Dead), Valzacchi (Rosenkavalier) and Basilio / Don Curzio in the new Le nozze di Figaro. He enjoyed great success with Captain Vere in Billy Budd, Mime in Das Rheingold, Don Alvar in a new production of Meyerbeer's L’Africaine (get the CD! Oehmsclassics) and roles including The Abbot / Tempter & Tempter / Nebuchadnezzar (new Prodigal Son / Burning Fiery Furnace double bill), Goro & Yamadori (Madame Butterfly), the White Minister (new Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre), Monostatos (Die Zauberflöte), Witch (Hänsel und Gretel), Doge (Rossini's 5 tenor Otello), Triquet (Eugene Onegin) , 2nd Jew (Salome), Rouvel (Giordano's Fedora), Antonio (Rossini's Thieving Magpie). Roles in earlier seasons included Johnny Inkslinger (Paul Bunyan), Dancing Master (Ariadne auf Naxos), Fedotik (Eötvös’ Tri sestri / Three Sisters - get the CD!), Prior Walter (Angels in America), Antonio (The Tempest), the Duke of Cornwall (Reimann's Lear - get the CD!), Mastro Trabuco in La forza del destino and Fürst Hérisson de Porc-Epic (Chabrier's L’Étoile). He trained in Boston and appeared in Frankfurt as a guest before joining the ensemble. Other recent engagements included appearances at the Festwochen in Vienna, the Aldeburgh Festival, the Aalto Theater in Essen, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, the Darmstadt, Nürnberg and Wiesbaden state theatres and Schauspielfrankfurt.