In 1981, she sang professionally for the first time when composer
Gian Carlo Menotti invited her to perform at the
Spoleto Festival in Italy and Charleston, South Carolina, United States. At first, she used the stage name "Suzanne Hong" because
Kurt Adler of Juilliard suggested she use a name that could easily be pronounced by English speakers. However, Hong quickly reverted to her given Korean name after the Spoleto Festival; she said that all her friends in the Juilliard School of Music persuaded her to use "her own beautiful Korean name". As a winner of the 1982
Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, she made her
Metropolitan Opera debut as Servilia in
Mozart's opera
La clemenza di Tito on November 17, 1984. Beginning with minor roles such as the Celestial Voice in
Don Carlo, Virgin in
Samson and Barbarina in
Le nozze di Figaro, she got to sing a major role for the first time at the Met – Mimì in
La bohème on January 7, 1987. Since then, she has gradually moved into main roles such as Susanna in
Le nozze di Figaro, Adina in ''
L'elisir d'amore, and Gilda in Rigoletto. Since the mid-1990s she has specialized in more lyric roles including Liù in Turandot and Countess Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro''. Like many non-Italian and non-German singers, she has not been tied to operas of specific languages; her repertoire includes Italian (Verdi, Puccini, Donizetti), German (Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner) and French (Bizet, Gounod, Offenbach). But Mozart occupies the most important place in her repertoire; beside three roles in
Le nozze di Figaro – Countess Almaviva (30 performances), Susanna (10 performances) and Barbarina (8 performances), she has sung Zerlina in
Don Giovanni (29 performances), Despina in
Così fan tutte (14 performances), Servilia in
La clemenza di Tito (11 performances), Pamina in
Die Zauberflöte (9 performances), and Ilia in
Idomeneo (9 performances). Among the roles she has sung (but not at the Met), are the title role in Massenet's
Manon, Musetta in
La bohème, Tatyana in
Eugene Onegin and Leila in
Les pêcheurs de perles. Although the Met has been her main stage since her debut, after giving birth to her third child she began to sing in Europe as well. She has sung at various opera houses including the
Royal Opera House in London (as Mimì and Liù),
Vienna State Opera (as Mimì),
Bavarian State Opera in Munich (as Mimì),
Opéra Bastille in Paris (as Liù, Countess Almaviva, Micaëla in
Carmen),
Verona Arena (as Micaëla),
Rome Opera House (as Liù). On January 28, 2003, she made her debut at
La Scala in Milan as Musetta in
La bohème. She returned to La Scala as Liù in
Turandot (January 2004) and Mimì in
La bohème (June 2005). On June 4, 2006, she sang Violetta in
La traviata at the Met, becoming the first Asian soprano to sing the role at the Met. And on March 1, 2007, she sang Eva in
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Met for the first time. According to the Metropolitan Opera homepage, through September 2015, her most frequently sung role at the Met has been Mimì in
La bohème (64 performances), followed by Micaëla in
Carmen (35 performances), Liù in
Turandot (33 performances) and Countess Almaviva in
Le nozze di Figaro (30 performances). Hong also has wide experience in orchestral repertoire. She has sung Bach with Trevor Pinnock and the Montreal Symphony, and the conductor and composer Giuseppe Sinopoli wrote his
Lou Salome Suite for her, which they premiered together with the New York Philharmonic. She has appeared with the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and many others under conductors such as Charles Dutoit, Mariss Jansons, Seiji Ozawa, André Previn, and Lorin Maazel, with whom she sang the final scene from Strauss'
Daphne for the Bayerische Rundfunk. ==Personal life==