Lyric Opera 2021-2022 Issue 6 Tosca 2

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 31 Kim studied composition in Korea, “but I always worked with singers and instrumentalists, accompanying them at the piano. I also always attended voice lessons, so I knew what singing was about—the voice attracted me as an instrument. Every second year our university did an opera production, so I became a rehearsal pianist.” She began her conducting in Seoul, and after relocating to Stuttgart, Germany, she earned a doctorate there in orchestra conducting. She came up the traditional way for conductors in Europe, playing for rehearsals and coaching singers in an opera house—in her case Madrid’s Teatro Real. With her 2012 debut in Frankfurt, she was off and running, quickly accumulating credits in major European opera companies. She has triumphed at London’s English National Opera, the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm, and all the leading German companies (Berlin, Stuttgart, Dresden, Frankfurt, Cologne), as well as in the United States. Is there a desert-island performance of hers that left her totally satisfied? “I’m never satisfied! Artistically I have my ideal, but it’s always difficult to find a balance between that ideal performance or sound and what it actually is.” Inevitably, though, particular performances do stand out, including that Frankfurt debut: “It all happened very fast! They changed the performance from a concert to La bohème and were looking for a conductor. I didn’t know the orchestra, and there was no rehearsal with them. In Germany, for La traviata or La bohème , you don’t get rehearsal—you just go into the pit in the evening.” Applause for her from the orchestra made her realize that she’d truly gotten the job done. Kim has strong memories of her North American debut with Traviata at Houston Grand Opera (2017, after HGO’s theater suffered damage from Hurricane Harvey). “They reached out in late July to say they were looking for a venue—it was going to be the convention center.” The company offered to switch the productions and make Kim’s debut later, once the theater was repaired, “but I just said ‘the venue doesn’t matter—I will come!’” Kim is now principal guest conductor at HGO. And her appointment at San Francisco Opera is nothing less than history-making. Rusalka , her debut there in 2019, was Photo: Cory Weaver Eun Sun Kim conducts Rusalka rehearsal at San Francisco Opera.