About this Artist

Following her sensational debut with Houston Grand Opera’s 2017/18 production of La Traviata, Eun Sun Kim was named the company’s next Principal Guest Conductor. Beginning the 2019/20 season, she will be the first conductor to hold this title in Houston in 25 years and will further her operatic presence in North America with a new production of Rusalka at San Francisco Opera. She also recently received broad praise for her performance of Verdi’s Messa de Requiem with the Cincinnati Symphony and May Festival Chorus in May 2018.

Alongside her North American breakthrough, Ms. Kim is a regular guest conductor at many important European opera houses. She maintains a particularly close connection with the Berlin State Opera where, after recent successful productions of La Traviata, Ariadne auf Naxos, Madama Butterfly and Un ballo in maschera, she will conduct Il Trovatore in the 2018/19 season. She opens the 2018/19 season with the same title at the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen and continues the season at the Bavarian State Opera where she will conduct Hänsel and Gretel, followed by Madama Butterfly at the Stuttgart Opera. Ms. Kim can be seen on the concert stage this season with symphony orchestras in Lille, Malmö, Milwaukee, Calgary and Santiago de Compostela.

In the 2017/18 season, she conducted Carmen at the Zurich Opera, Rigoletto at Dresden’s Semperoper, and La Sonnambula at the Frankfurt opera, where she had previously celebrated successes with The Count of Luxembourg, The Flying Dutchman, La Bohème, and the Csárdás Princess. Prior to that she made her debut at the Cologne Opera with a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor, and she established herself in Scandinavia with her highly successful debut at the Royal Swedish Opera on Madama Butterfly, and her return to that house in Autumn 2016 to conduct The Barber of Seville. In Oslo she has conducted Carmen, and in Bergen Madama Butterfly and The Flying Dutchman. Her concert activities in Scandinavia have led her to Oslo, Gothenburg, Malmö, Umeå, and Aarhus.

Eun Sun Kim’s international breakthrough came in Autumn of 2021 with her celebrate debut at the Frankfurt Opera’s production of La Bohème. Following that she debuted at the English National Opera in London in Autumn 2013 on a new production of Die Fledermaus, after which she conducted several concerts in Nancy, Palermo, Turin, and Bonn. She further conducted Carmen at the Vienna Volksoper, followed by La Traviata, Hänsel and Gretel and Die Fledermaus, as well as a further La Traviata in Marseille, where she has also been invited for symphonic concerts. In Summer 2014, she conducted a new production of Tosca at the Macerata Opera Festival.

Earlier in her career, she made in Spring 2010 debuts at the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid, and at the Teatro Real with with Rossini’s Il Viaggio a Reims. In the following season she made her successful debut at the Graz Opera with Puccini’s La Bohème.

Eun Sun Kim studied composition and conducting in her hometown of Seoul, before continuing her studies in Stuttgart where she graduated with distinction. Directly after completing her studies, she was awarded the First Prize in the “International Jesús López Cobos Opera Conducting Competition.”