Hei-Kyung Hong Soprano

The beautiful Korean-American soprano Hei-Kyung Hong is at the height of a career that has taken her to most of the world's operatic capitals in an enormous variety of roles ranging from the Baroque to contemporary works. Following a remarkably successful debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1984 (as Servilia in La clemenza di Tito, conducted by James Levine) she has gone on to sing nearly 200 performances of most of the major roles in her repertoire at the Met, including the great Mozart roles Ilia, Pamina, Despina, Zerlina and both Susanna and the Countess; Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare; Puccini's Mimi, Liu, and Lauretta; Gilda in Rigoletto (opposite Luciano Pavarotti), Gounod's Juliette, and many others including Rosina in John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles and Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Freia in Das Rheingold, again under James Levine. Several of these performances were either broadcast on the Live from the Met series on PBS or recorded for DVD and available on the Deutsche Grammophon label.

Hei-Kyung Hong has sung in all of the most renowned theaters in North America. She made her Lyric Opera of Chicago debut as Musetta, her San Francisco Opera debut as Gilda, and has appeared at the Canadian Opera and the opera companies of Dallas, Los Angeles, and Washington among many others. Her operatic repertoire expanded in these settings to include triumphs as Massenet's Manon, Tatyana in Eugene Onegin, and Leila in Les Pecheurs de Perles. Most recently she added the iconic role of Violetta in La traviata for the Washington Opera, with rave reviews and overwhelming audience response. In the 2006-2007 season she brought her Violetta to the Metropolitan Opera as well as her celebrated Liu and Mimi for the popular "Met in the Parks" performances. She also made her role debut as Eva in Die Meistersinger. In the 2007/8 season, she will return to the Met as Mozart's Countess conducted by Philippe Jordan. She will repeat her Violetta for her debut at Cincinnati Opera. She appears twice at Carnegie Hall, the first in a gala concert of arias and ensembles with tenor Woo-Kyung Kim and baritone Hyung Yun and the second in Mendelssohn's Elijah with the Collegiate Chorale. She also tours Korea in a program of sacred music in December 2007.

European theaters have also received Hei-Kyung Hong with rare enthusiasm. Her debut at La Scala as Liu resulted in an offer to open their 2004 season in the famed theater's newly renovated house as Mimi. Her debuts at Covent Garden and in Rome were again as Liu. Paris has heard her as Micaela, the Countess in Figaro, and as Liu; Vienna, Munich, and Amsterdam all as Mimi.

Hei-Kyung Hong's orchestral repertoire is as broad as her operatic experience. She has sung Bach with Trevor Pinnock and the Montreal Symphony, and the late conductor and composer Giuseppe Sinopoli wrote his Lou Salome Suite for her, which they premiered together with the New York Philharmonic. She has appeared with the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and many others under conductors such as Charles Dutoit, Mariss Jansons, Seiji Ozawa, Andre Previn, and Lorin Maazel, with whom she sang the Final Scene from Daphne for the Bayerische Rundfunk.

Hei-Kyung Hong's first solo recording of operatic arias was released in 1998 on RCA Red Seal. She recorded Bellini's I Capuletti e i Montecchi with mezzo-soprano
Jennifer Larmore for the Teldec label; she and Larmore also collaborated on "Bellezze
Vocale", a collection of operatic duets, also for Teldec. She recorded Carmina Burana with the Atlanta Symphony for Telarc, and she appears on many other recordings and DVDs originating from her operatic performances, many conducted by James Levine.

Hei-Kying Hong is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music and its American Opera Center. She lives in New York with her husband and three children.

Date Last Edited: 12th November 2007