‘Sumi Jo & Malcolm Martineau: Mad for Love – 40th Anniversary Celebration’ at the Cadogan Hall in London next month is a one night only celebration of the world-renowned South Korean soprano and the four decades since her sensational European debut in 1986. Sumi Jo will be accompanied by award-winning Scottish pianist Malcolm Martineau and joined by American baritone Edward Nelson, winner of the 2020 Glyndebourne Opera Cup and recently named among OperaWire’s Top Ten Rising Stars of 2025. With a programme featuring Vivaldi, Donizetti, Delibes, Bellini, Duparc, Lehar, Korngold, Rossini and Rodgers & Hammerstein, culminating in memorable solo and ensemble performances.
Captivating audiences internationally since her debut, Sumi Jo has sung leading roles at the foremost opera houses of the world, from the Metropolitan Opera House, New York and La Scala, Milan to the Wiener Staatsoper in Vienna and many others, recording over 40 albums with conductors including Sir Georg Solti and Herbert von Karajan, besides winning a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording in 1992 for her performance of Richard Strauss’s three-act opera, Die Frau ohne Schatten. Her 1994 recording of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos saw her become the first artist to perform the original 20 minute version of ‘Zerbinetta’, an aria so famed for its extreme vocal endurance requirements that even Strauss, not thinking any soprano could sing it, produced a shortened version.
To say Sumi Jo has an impressive CV would be not only an understatement, but an insult. As the first Asian soprano to win La Siola d’Oro in 1993, she has been honoured with Korea’s Gold Crown Order of Cultural Merit, France’s Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and has long been considered one of the greatest bel canto sopranos of her generation. Having established a reputation for, not only possessing an incredibly beautiful voice, but an astonishing upper range and emotional depth, it is endearing to learn that she still considers herself “work in progress”. As the wonderfully eclectic programme for the Cadogan Hall concert shows, Sumi Jo has a far wider repertoire than most sopranos, however acclaimed they might be, and perhaps it’s this youthful enthusiasm for continual growth that makes her such a captivating performer. Having once said that “I think music is a God-given mission for me”, there is certainly no sign of Sumi Jo slowing down.
Having been born in a far less constraining political climate than her mother who, an amateur singer and pianist who was prevented from pursuing a career professionally during the 1950s, Sumi Jo’s mother enrolled her in piano and singing lessons from an early age, determined that she should have the opportunities earlier generations of women did not. Under a different kind of constraint, Sumi Jo was often expected to study music for eight hours a day; an arduous routine which saw her entering the Sun Hwa Arts School at the age of fourteen, from which she graduated in 1980, receiving dual diplomas in voice and piano before continuing her musical studies at the Seoul National University’s department of vocal music until 1983, the year she made her professional debut as Susanna in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro with the Seoul Opera.
But still Sumi Jo continued her education. Travelling to Italy to study under Carlo Bergonzi and Giannella Borelli at the prestigious Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome; graduating with majors in keyboard and voice in 1985 before being mentored by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and winning several international competitions in Seoul, Naples, Enna, Barcelona and Pretoria. Unanimously awarded first prize in the 1986 Carlo Alberto Cappelli International Competition in Verona, her star was in the ascendance as she made her European operatic debut as Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Verdi in Trieste.
In addition to having spent four decades travelling the world in order to perform in full scale productions or deliver solo performances such as the 2008 Olympic Games, Sumi Jo is also passionate about helping the next generation of opera stars and has given many masterclasses including at the Teatro dell’ Opera di Roma as part of the Fabbrica Young Artist Program, granting eight scholarship-awarded students the opportunity to make their debut at the opera house.
The ‘Queen of Coloratura’ and ‘La Jo’ as the international press call her, she is also known for her flamboyant fashion sense and love of haute couture houses like Christian Lacroix, who are only too pleased to design exquisitely-crafted stage dresses for a woman whose voice has retained a youthful freshness throughout the decades despite a gruelling schedule, something which, combined with her unmistakable charisma, allows audiences to believe in each and every character she adopts, regardless of what she is wearing. Speaking in an interview she explained, “If you met me on the street when I run with my dogs, I don’t think you’d recognise me. I wear a baseball hat – that’s me, that’s Sumi…but on stage I’m a diva, I’m a prima donna, I feel like a queen.”
If you won’t take my word for why hearing her voice in person is something all dedicated opera lovers should try to experience at least once in a lifetime, believe the esteemed conductor Herbert von Karajan who described her voice as “the best gift God has given”, or Baroque violinist Pavlo Beznosiuk, who remarked, “One can talk at length about her amazing instrument and dazzling technique, but these are made so much more potent by her sheer intensity, a quality which convinces the listener that right now nothing in the world is more important than listening to her.”
Sumi Jo & Malcolm Martineau: Mad for Love – 40th Anniversary Celebration at The Cadogan Hall on Thursday 12 March 2026 at 7.30pm. For more information and tickets please visit the website.
