New Artist of the Month: Soprano Song Hee Lee

Song Hee Lee’s singing, at March’s Met Opera Laffont Competition finals, was brilliant. Small wonder the 28-year-old Seoul-born soprano was named a winner after her tour de force renderings of "Tornami a vagheggiar" from Handel’s Alcina and Ophelia’s mad scene from Ambrose Thomas’s Hamlet. Both selections were notable for the pinpoint accuracy of her coloratura and the sparkle of her leggiero singing.

It was her maiden appearance at the Met, but she took ownership of stage and auditorium. She was clearly doing exactly what she wanted and exactly where. Lee is a woman who loves to sing.

“My parents tell me that when I was a little child, even before I could speak properly, I was memorizing lyrics and humming tunes,” she tells me in a Zoom interview. “They say I couldn’t keep my mouth shut—which they found kind of fascinating. So they let me take singing lessons, just as a hobby, but I loved it so much that the hobby naturally grew into my passion, and right now it’s my entire life.”

Childhood voice lessons focused on material like “Tomorrow,” from Annie, and the folk song “Shenandoah.” These proved of less interest to her than the aria antica “Caro mio ben.”

“I completely fell in love with it, and I could mimic the style naturally,” she says.

Her first exposure to opera came from a Paris Opera DVD of Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes, featuring Les Arts Florissants and conducted by William Christie—a man who would later play a significant role in Lee’s artistic development. “I was immediately drawn into it,” she says. “The production design, the music, the staging—it felt like Disney’s Fantasia to me. It was like a culture shock: It made me realize how magical the world of opera is.”

Though music was not prevalent in her childhood household, a consciousness of other artforms was. “My father owns a design-related business, and many of my relatives work in the visual arts, she says. “So maybe that subconsciously helped me focus on artistic accomplishment.” Although they fostered her voice lessons, they did not expect her to become a professional singer, sending her to the liberal arts program at Seoul National University. “They thought I might quit singing and do something else, or maybe just get married,” she says.

In the middle of her second year at university, though, she flew to New York to audition for Juilliard, and got accepted into the Bachelor of Music program. “When I first mentioned that I wanted to move to New York, my parents were like, ‘Absolutely not!’ They weren’t happy. But I persuaded them to let me come sing here, and it all worked out well. But still, up to this day, they joke ‘You could always come back!’”

She met Christie at Juilliard, where he serves as artist-in-residence, and works with Juilliard 415, the conservatory’s period-instrument ensemble. The association with the famed conductor has most definitely given her singing and her career a boost: this spring, at Christie’s invitation, she toured with Les Arts Florissants in a program of Scarlatti and Vivaldi sacred music.

“I love Bill because he really respects the freedom of singers,” Lee says. “He doesn’t limit anything. He has so many different ideas to share. He makes you think about colors and images. Sometimes as a singer, you focus too much on technique. You think ‘I should sing sacred music a certain way.’ But with Bill, I felt like I was singing in the right style, but also singing out in my own voice, rather than something that’s not mine. He connects to the audience, and it helped me to connect easily. It’s like magic happening on stage.”

Lee just finished her last year in Juilliard’s Artist Diploma program, and the end of her education has overlapped with her professional life.  Last spring, she sang Cleopatra—a “dream role”—in R.B. Schlather’s production of Giulio Cesare at Hudson Hall in upstate New York. This season, her local gigs have included appearances with the period-instrument ensemble Sonnambula and the American Classical Orchestra, not to mention her participation in the Laffont Competition. “Sometimes it’s been scary,” she says. “But this is my first step—getting out there and learning new things. Everything is a surprise.”

Next season she will tour with Il Pomo d’Oro, singing Belinda in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas alongside Joyce DiDonato’s Dido. She mentions Thomas’s Ophelia and Strauss’s Zerbinetta as roles on her wish list. For now, she is simply thrilled to have started what promises to be an important career. “Being an opera singer, you get to collaborate with incredibly talented people,” she says. “It’s a beautiful privilege. And I’m having so much fun!”

Pictured: Song Hee Lee as Cleopatra in Hudson Hall’s Giulio Cesare

^{photo by Matthew Placek}