Hei-Kyung Hong

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Hei-Kyung Hong is a South Korean-American operatic lyric soprano.

Born July 4, 1959 in Gangwon province, South Korea. Hong studied at Yea Won Music School in Seoul and through scholarships went to the United States alone at age 15 to study at the Juilliard School of Music in New York and its American Opera Center. In 1981, she sang professionally for the first time when composer Gian-Carlo Menotti invited her to perform at the Spoleto Festival in Italy and Charleston, South Carolina. She first used the name "Susanne Hong" professionally because Kurt Adler of Juilliard suggested she use a name that could easily be pronounced by English speakers. Hong quickly reverted back to her given Korean name after the Spoleto Festival.^[1]

Hong made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Servilia in Mozart's opera La Clemenza di Tito on November 17, 1984. Until 1986, Hong had sung minor parts at the Met such as Celestial Voice in Verdi's Don Carlo and Barbarina in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro. On January 7, 1987, she began her career in leading roles at the Met with Mimì in Puccini's La Boheme.

Since then she has sung a wide range of roles at the Met, mainly in Mozart operas including Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Despina in Cosi Fan Tutte, Ilia in Idomeneo, and Pamina in Die Zauberflöte. But she also succeeded in Italian and French operas as Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto, Micaela in Bizet's Carmen, the title role of Massenet's Manon.

From late-1990s she moved to somewhat heavier parts such as Countess Almaviva in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, Liù in Puccini's Turandot, and most recently Violetta in Verdi's La Traviata and Eva in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Met.

Although the Met has been her main stage since her debut, she also sang at many other major opera houses in the United States and Europe, such as the Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Washington National Opera, Wiener Staatsoper, Teatro alla Scala di Milano, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London, L'Opéra de la Bastille in Paris, and the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich.

Hong is a Christian, whose faith began in her family with her grandparents, who were elders at a Presbyterian church in the South Korean city of Gwangju.

Hong was on the cover of Opera News magazine for the June 2007 issue.^[2]

She currently lives in Queens, New York with her husband and three children.