Arts & Events
Eun Sun Kim Named Music Director of San Francisco Opera
On Thursday, December 5, Matthew Shilvock, the company’s General Director, announced from the stage of San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House that 39 year-old Eun Sun Kim, who conducted the highly regarded Rusalka here in June, was named the new Music Director of San Francisco Opera. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Eun Sun Kim becomes the first woman to hold the lead post at an American opera company of major size and stature.
Ms. Kim’s conducting career has seen her leading major European orchestras, including the Staatsoper in Berlin, where Daniel Barenboim invited her to debut in 2015. Her American conducting debut came in 2017 when she led a Houston Grand Opera production of Verdi’s La Traviata that took place under trying circumstances in the midst of Hurricane Harvey, which flooded much of Houston, including the opera company’s regular home, causing the La Traviata performances to be held in an improvised theater in a convention center. So impressed was Houston Grand Opera that they immediately named Eun Sun Kim their Principal Guest Conductor.
Ms. Kim will officially begin as Music Director at San Francisco Opera in 2021, but she will conduct a new production of Beethoven’s Fidelio here in 2020. The company’s General Director, Matthew Shilvock, said that from the first rehearsals of Rusalka it was so clear that Eun Sun Kim brought “a special kind of energy,” that he chose to watch one of her Rusalka performances from the orchestra pit. “She’s a conductor who really opens her arms and invites the people around her to make the very best music they can,” noted Shilvock.
San Francisco Opera is to be applauded for naming a woman to the post of Music Director. I voiced in these pages my disappointment when San Francisco Symphony passed up conductor Susanna Målkki in favor of Esa Pekka Salonen as their Music Director replacing Michael Tilson Thomas. In a bold move, San Francisco Opera now embarks on an exciting new course. If last June’s Rusalka is any indication, we may rightly expect great things to come as Eun Sun Kim assumes the post of Music Director.
