“I will soon meet my Korean fans to wish them a happy New Year’s with Johann Strauss’ ‘Voices of Spring’!”

So said soprano Hong Hae-ran, who will soon visit her homeland for a joint concert with the Strauss Festival Orchestra Vienna at the Seoul Arts Center (SAC) on January 15. The prestigious orchestra was launched in 1978 by Peter Guth, known as the world’s leading Strauss specialist.

Properly speaking, this Seoul concert is her official debut in the nation. Her musical activities have been so far centered on the U.S., as part of one of that country’s most coveted orchestras, the Metropolitan Opera based in New York.

“I am so excited and so happy to finally perform in my home country, especially for this meaningful show that rings in New Year’s 2014,” said Hong. “It is really exciting that I will finally be able to, in person, feel the energy of the Korean fans, whose intensity and dedication is really well-known overseas.”

Born in Jeongseon, Gangwon-do (Gangwon Province), in 1981, Hong first experienced the magnetism of music when she started singing in her school’s choir at the age of 14. Her musical aptitude expanded as she studied at the Korea National University of Arts and, eventually, at the Juilliard School of Music.

It was in 2011 that her musicality started to be recognized worldwide. At that time, she became the first Asian singer to win the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition, considered to be one of the world’s three most prestigious international competitions, along with the International Chopin Competition and the International Tchaikovsky Competition.

The same year, the soprano was selected as part of the Metropolitan Opera, every singer’s dream, and since then she has sung there for three seasons.


In its 2011-2012 season, the singer made her debut as the woodbird in “Siegfried,” the third of four operas in Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung.” She continued to show off her singing virtuosity in the 2012-2013 season, too, by singing in another opera by Wagner, “Parsifal,” as well as Verdi’s “A Masked Ball” and Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites.”

For the 2013-2014 season, the soprano will cover a repertoire in which she is to take on roles of greater importance, such as Sophi in Massenet’s “Werther” and as Nannetta in Verdi’s “Falstaff.” In May, the soprano will collaborate with Seattle’s Pacific MusicWorks to sing the lead role in Handel’s opera “Semele” and she has already been cast as Zerbinetta in the opera “Ariadne on Naxos” by Richard Strauss, to be held next year.

Ever since she joined the orchestra, she has been taking on a wide range of roles, first small ones and gradually bigger ones. “There are still a lot more roles that I want to try,” Hong says.

“If I keep on this way, I am sure that I will be able to take the role of Gilda in Verdi’s ’Rigoletto’ or Adina in Donizetti’s ’The Exlixir of Love’ someday,” she said.

For the upcoming Seoul concert, Hong will present an extensive repertoire of masterpieces she herself selected. They include Johann Strauss’ “Voices of Spring,” “Im Chambre Separee” from Richard Heuberger’s “The Opera Ball” and, lastly, “Vilja Song” from “The Merry Widow” by Franz Lehar.


More information can be found at the SAC website below.
http://www.sac.or.kr/

By Sohn JiAe
Korea.net Staff Writer
jiae5853@korea.kr