For bass-baritone Ryan McKinny who had never even thought about becoming an opera singer, it was because a professor in that California city college told him he should seriously think about making it a career. And because once McKinny was introduced to opera, he fell in love with the art form.
He ended up transferring to Julliard, was a studio artist with HGO, lived in Germany and now after several roles around the country, he's back in Houston to sing the part of Kurwenal in Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. He's been studying the part for years.
It's an effort that has sometimes defeated other good singers. When Wagner wrote this opera (it usually clocks in at around five hours), based on a well-known legend of the time, others thought it couldn't actually be staged because of its length and difficulty of the roles. And legend has it, it killed the first tenor who sang the Tristan role.
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