Mezzo-soprano

Hyona Kim

Madama Butterfly

Biography

Lauded by The New York Times as a “vibrant and dark-toned, agile mezzo-soprano,” Hyona Kim makes her first appearance with Irish National Opera in this role. Upcoming engagements for the 2025/26 season include her debut as Suzuki in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at the Metropolitan Opera New York, Mistress Quickly in Verdi’s Falstaff at LA Opera, and Brangäne in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at Korea National Opera. In the 2024/25 season, she performed Suzuki in Madama Butterfly with the Royal Danish Opera. Other highlights that season included Amneris in Verdi’s Aida at Opera Maine, additional performances as Suzuki at LA Opera, the Canadian Opera Company, and with the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as her return to the Metropolitan Opera to cover the role of Amneris. Her career has seen her at the New York City Opera, Romanian National Opera Cluj-Napoca, Opera Carolina, Opera Lancaster, Opera Company of Middlebury, among others. Other roles include Azucena in Verdi’s Il Trovatore , Mistress Quickly in Verdi’s Falstaff, Hermia in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Wowkle in Puccini’s La fanciulla del West, Olga and Larina in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. She was a member of the ensemble of Dortmund Opera from 2018 to 2023 and performed, among others, the roles of Tzippie in Oliver Knussen’s Where The Wild Things Are, the title role in the German premiere production of Frédégonde by Ernest Guiraud, Paul Dukas, and Camille Saint-Saëns, Nancy Tang in John Adams’s Nixon in China, Ortrud in Wagner’s Lohengrin, and Amneris in Aida.

October 2025.