Dutch National Opera's Martina Myskohlid is done being called a "young artist"

It has been a bittersweet week for opera singer Martina Myskohlid, who is finishing up her time as a young artist at the Dutch National Opera Studio. The Canadian mezzo-soprano most recently sang the role of Dido in Dido and Aeneas, and she is set to leave Amsterdam, which she has enjoyed since arriving just a few years ago.

She sat down with the Dam Yankee podcast, in partnership with NL Times, for an exit interview before heading off to perform in Munich and Torino. Though she claims to have been singing since she was in the womb, she discusses how playing Sharpay in High School Musical changed her focus, how even she thought opera was lame once upon a time, and how directors and opera companies are staging their shows differently to draw in younger audiences.

Dam Yankee: Why is it that you don’t like the term “young artist”?

Martina Myskohlid: I'm a studio artist. You know, when you're young, you're green. And I don't feel so green anymore. I feel like I've done a lot. Not enough, of course. There's always so much more to do, to check off the list. But yeah, studio artist. Let's go with that.

DY: You only started singing opera about 10 years ago. How did you find out this was the path for you?

MM: I went to Canada's number one performing arts high school, called Etobicoke School of the Arts. I was like, I want to do musical theatre because I had played Sharpay in High School Musical in middle school, when I was in grade six. It caused so much drama, because the lead roles are meant for people in grade eight. But I was in grade six, and that was a really big deal.

I had stopped doing choir when I went to high school to focus on musical theatre—singing, dancing, acting. This is a completely different style of singing. And then in grade 11, I took this course where one of the assignments was to explore a genre you'd never really explored before. Everybody wanted to do jazz, but I was like, not a lot of people here know that I have this choral training background. So I decided to sing something classical, because it was kind of simpler for me than jazz.

I sang Schubert’s Ave Maria—a classic. The teacher was like, “This sounds amazing. What are you doing? You should really research a little bit more about opera and classical singing.” And I was like, “Classical singing is so lame.”

But I went home and did my research on opera, and I was like, oh my God, the massive sets, scandalous, sexy plots, huge costumes, wigs, and everything. And it’s this European tradition. I felt really drawn to it because of my heritage, being Austrian and Ukrainian. I was like, wow, opera is actually really cool.

DY: Let's be honest, opera is typically not something that young people embrace for whatever reason. Perhaps it’s because there's other distractions and other forms of entertainment, or maybe it's because you become more patient later. Why do you think this is?

MM: A part of me wants to agree 100 percent. Productions and operas are getting more visually active. But I don't know if that's the case for all productions and all directors. Because if people don't know, we're kind of doing the same operas that we've been doing for sometimes hundreds of years, with different interpretations and different staging.

I think it's really important, especially with how quickly we receive information nowadays on Instagram and TikTok and that sort of thing. Videos are so short and to the point, and also are so visually stimulating. I think that's what we need in opera for more people, more young people especially, to come. Bigger things need to happen on stage that draw the attention of the audience and keep it. Not just draw it, but keep it. I think about these things a lot.

Listen to this entire episode of Dam Yankee wherever you get your podcasts, or watch the full videos on YouTube. Myskohlid goes on to recount testifying on the stand as a witness to a Halloween night murder, the physical stereotypes of opera singers, and overcoming imposter syndrome.

Her next adventure is all charted out. She will be performing with the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich this June and July and the Teatro Regio Torino for the 2025–2026 season. Information about her upcoming performances can be found on her website.