‘Hye-Youn Lee’s achievement in the title role was a tour de force, the tower of strength at the evening’s heart’ – Opera Magazine
South Korean soprano Hye-Youn Lee’s recent portrayal of Cio-Cio San in Madama Butterfly for Grange Park Opera received widespread critical acclaim. Other recent highlights include Violetta in La Traviata for Scottish Opera, and Verdi’s Requiem for the Filharmonic George Enescu and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. This season she returns to Scottish Opera for Mimi in La bohéme.
Operatic highlights elsewhere include Cio-Cio San in Madama Butterfly for Finnish National Opera, Icelandic Opera and Theater Magdaburg, and Donna Anna in Don Giovanni for Northern Ireland Opera and Bergen National Opera. She made her role debut as Mimi in La bohéme for the Teatro Lirico Guiseppe Verdi de Trieste. Hye-Youn has a particularly close relationship with Scottish Opera where her roles have included the title role in Daphne, Micaëla in Carmen and Madame Mao in Nixon in China.
Born in South Korea, Hye-Youn Lee pursued her musical education in Berlin, where she studied with Renate Krahmer and Julia Varady. Subsequently, she joined Les Jeunes Voix du Rhin at L’Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg, where she made her debut as Lucia in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor- a role she returns to in future seasons. She continued her training at L’Atelier Lyrique at L’Opéra National de Paris before relocating to the United Kingdom- making a debut in the UK as Marie in La Fille de Régiment.
‘As Violetta, Hye-Youn Lee is simply sensational, with a sweet tone and agile upper register’ – The Guardian
‘…on opening night, it was Lee’s stunning emotive rendering of Micaëla’s aria that had the audience in raptures’ – The Telegraph
August 2025
