Jo, Sumi: A Korean Soprano

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Biography:

She has many names. From one side of coin, Sumi Jo has captured the heart, the mind, and the imagination of the world with her remarkable musicianship and her equally commanding personality. On the other side of coin, she stands for Korean culture and art worldwide.

A disciple of Maria Callas and Dame Joan Sutherland, a Korean-upbringing vocalist, Sumi Jo has emerged as one of the most beautiful voices in contemporary Opera. As a coloratura soprano, Sumi Jo is a true diva of the highest order. Nature has been bountiful to her by endowing her with a fabulous voice and memory. Admired for the astonishing emotional expression‎, authenticity, and warmth of her coloratura voice and for her impeccable artisanship pursing her originality, Sumi Jo has claimed as “a voice from above” by the immortal maestro Conductor in the 20th century, Herbert von Karajan.

Sumi Jo manages to create a warm, human relationship between herself and audiences on the stage. That is the way Sumi Jo likes to work. She tries to arouse the men through uninhibited emotional demonstrations as the music is being sung. She swoons, prays, scowls, fumes, entreats, and sings. She is not afraid to voice her feminine enthusiasms. She totally indulges herself in a particularly beautiful passage of her song and translates the musical sounds of composers into human experience. Her instinctive and innate musical intelligence provides her with an articulateness that enables her to transmit her artistic style clearly and precisely.

Sumi Jo’s first break as a soprano came in 1986 as Gilda in Giuseppe Verdi’s opera, Rigoletto in Trieste, Italy. Successfully celebrating her debut, her exquisite timbre and musicality was immediately recognized. Since then, fully in control of her voice and her artistic and spiritual goals, her international career took off. In 1987, she made her Salzburg Festival debut as Oscar in Verdi’s Un Ballo in maschera under the musical guardians of maestro Karajan. Remarkably, it was only a year had elapsed since her graduation from Santa Cecilia Academy, Rome, Italy.
Sumi Jo’s fervent attempts to sing has been leading her to portrait many great opera composers’ heroines with many international productions. She has performed Donizetti’s opera, Lucia De Lamermoor in Strasbourg, Barcelona, Paris, and New York; Bellini’s opera, La Sonnambula in Santiago del Chile; Strauss’s opera, Der Rosenkavalier in Los Angeles; Verdi’s opera, Rigoletto in Bilbao and Oviedo in Spain, Bologna and Trieste in Italy, and Detroit and New York in USA; Rossini’s opera, Il Turco in Italia in Spain; Ravel’s opera, L’Enfant et les Sortileges in Boston and Pittsburgh in USA; Rossini’s opera, Le Comte Ory in Rome and Aix-en-Provence Festival in France.

Within the musical profession itself normally hard-to-please critics vie for superlatives with which to praise her fruity coloratura voice, its dazzling agility and range of four octaves and her magnetic personality, which sets the stage alight. Recently, Sumi Jo appeared in The House of Montague and the house of Capulet in Minnesota, USA on Jan. 2000. Interestingly, Dame Joan’s life time partner, an Australian pianist, Richard Bonynge recommended her to Minnesota opera. Maestro Bonynge recognised Jo’s potential when he had first collaborated with her in Mozart’s Die Zauberflote three years ago; and he helped mould her Bel Canto technique. Since then, he has been a mentor for Sumi Jo, and showed a firm partnership in her second debut, Top Operatic Star, in Carnegie Hall, N.Y. on Feb.6, 2001.
Her busy schedule with various opera productions seems endless. She will be performing Offenbach with a tenor, Placido Domingo in Washington D.C in August 2001;and it is good enough to attract the new President of the United States, President George W. Bush. Her musical travelling doesn’t miss a single spot on the earth. Her musical tour will be far reaching to Amsterdam, Netherlands in the same month as well as the performance of Verdi’s Rigoletto with Bastille Opera in France; Mozart’s Die Zauberflote in San Juan, Texas, USA, and Lucia di Lamermoor in Sydney, Australia until 2003.

This article is from Sumi Jo's Website.

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