My career in opera kicked off with a disappointment, although everything had been going smoothly up to then! I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember. I was having lessons at the age of seven, warbling Korean children’s ditties, winning competitions, even appearing on television. My parents sent me to a school of music, where I studied theory, sheet music, harmony and eventually opera singing. When I was 12, 13, I was given an assignment where I had to talk in front of the class on some aspect of Puccini’s MADAMA BUTTERFLY. I got really into it and watched heaps of YouTube videos, but I wasn’t exactly bowled over by it. The singing, the acting, nothing was right. I was sitting there, in the dark, thinking: I can do better than that! It motivated me and I hatched a plan to study singing in the US and then head to Europe. Not long after that I visited Berlin for the first time. I was standing outside the Deutsche Oper Berlin – summer break, it was shut – and thinking: I want to sing here. And now here I am. How crazy is that?

A former student of the Houston Grand Opera Studio, Sua Jo has been impressing audiences and critics alike. She is now a stipendiary of the Deutsche Oper Berlin