For Ryan and Tonya McKinny, Opera Has Always Been a Family Affair - Meet our Stage Director Tonya Mckinny and our Projection Director Ryan Mckinny

Editor's note: Fittingly for a couple whose lives have long been shaped by opera and travel, Ryan and Tonya answered these questions while Ryan was in New York rehearsing for the Metropolitan Opera’s world premiere of Lincoln in the Bardo. He sings the role of Hans Vollman in the new opera, which opens at Lincoln Center on October 19.

Opera has taken Ryan and Tonya McKinny around the world. But wherever the work has led, they made one decision early in their marriage: They would go together.

Ryan, an internationally acclaimed opera singer, and Tonya, a nationally recognized stage director and educator, live in North Carolina, but their careers have unfolded on stages and in rehearsal rooms around the globe. Now the husband-and-wife creative partners are bringing those experiences together for Piedmont Opera’s productions of Heggie & Scheer's Another Sunrise and Before It All Goes Dark, two one-act operas that make their North Carolina premiers at the Hanesbrands Theatre in Winston-Salem, November 12-22, 2026.

For Tonya, directing Before It All Goes Dark also means approaching a story her husband knows intimately. Ryan originated the role of Gerald “Mac” McDonald, the real-life Vietnam veteran whose remarkable story inspired Grammy Award-winning composer Jake Heggie and Pultizer prize-winning librettist Gene Scheer to create the opera. Gravely ill and unaware of his family’s Jewish ancestry, Mac learned that he was the rightful heir to an art collection stolen by the Nazis from a great-great-uncle in Prague. His search for that inheritance became something larger: a journey into a family history and an identity that had been hidden from him. Now Tonya will shape Mac’s story from the director’s chair, while Ryan, who first told it from the stage, takes on a different creative role behind the scenes, creating the production’s projections.

Their collaboration is the latest chapter in a partnership that began when Ryan was a student at Juilliard. The week he finished his final exams; the couple married in New York City. From the beginning, they knew the demands of a singer’s career could easily pull a family apart.

“Traveling full time in any profession makes having a close family life impossible unless everyone in the family is on the journey,” Tonya said.

So they decided everyone would be on the journey.

When their two children came along, the family continued traveling together. With few examples of other opera families doing the same, Ryan and Tonya decided they would, as Tonya put it, “just make it up as we go along.” Their children were homeschooled and “world-schooled,” with both parents teaching them and each new city becoming another kind of classroom.

There was a painting class at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, a Circus Arts class in Los Angeles, Spanish school in Buenos Aires and science at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

Today, their eldest is a junior at the University of Denver, and their son is a high school senior, but the philosophy that guided the family remains unchanged.

“We still make our decisions on what’s good for the family,” Tonya said. “Often that means it’s hardest on Ryan, but we get to be together, and that’s very important to us.”

As their children have grown, Tonya has found more space for her own directing and creative work. The pandemic also shifted the couple’s artistic partnership as they began working together on more projects.

“Working together is a labor of love,” she said. “We have always talked through his roles together, and now we can both be more impactful on the show, and it’s a lot of fun.”

Tonya came to opera through theater, and years spent alongside Ryan gave her an unusual education in the art form. She sat through countless rehearsals and came to know many of his directors. Her own approach emphasizes acting and visual storytelling without losing sight of the particular needs of cast and crew.

“When I am working with artists, I always ask them to tell me what they need to feel confident and give their best performance and then work that into the staging,” she said. “The collaboration is so fulfilling when everyone involved is heard and respected and can give their very best.”

For their children, opera has never been simply something that happens onstage. It has been woven into childhood itself. They learned to cartwheel in the halls of the Kennedy Center and celebrated birthdays in the green room at Houston Grand Opera. They learned that Happy Birthday sounds particularly beautiful in more than one language when a room full of opera singers gives you the gift of their voices.

Their unconventional upbringing also taught lessons that have little to do with opera.

“The kids know deeply about the impermanence of life and making the most of a moment, season, trip or visit,” Tonya said. “They understand that no matter where you go, you’re still yourself and being OK with who you are is key to loving yourself and the life you live.”

After a lifetime of stages, airplanes, temporary homes and new cities, perhaps that is the McKinnys’ most enduring collaboration: creating a home defined not by a place, but by the people who travel together.

PIEDMONT OPERA TICKET INFORMATION 

What: Piedmont Opera presents Another Sunrise and Before It All Goes Dark, two one-act operas by Grammy Award-winning composer Jake Heggie and Pulitzer prize-winning librettist Gene Scheer that explore memory, identity and the lasting impact of the Holocaust. Another Sunrise tells the story of Holocaust survivor and poet Krystyna Żywulska as she struggles to find the words to record her memories of Auschwitz. Before It All Goes Dark is based on the true story of Gerald “Mac” McDonald, a Vietnam veteran who discovers late in life that he is Jewish and that his family’s history is intertwined with the Holocaust. Tonya McKinny directs both works, with projections by Ryan McKinny.

When:  

Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026 at 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, Nov. 14 at 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, Nov. 15 at 3 p.m.

Tuesday, Nov. 17 at 7:30 p.m.

Friday, Nov. 20 at 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, Nov. 22 at 3 p.m.

Where: Hanesbrands Theatre, Winston-Salem, NC

Tickets & Information: PiedmontOpera.org or 336.725.7101