Kangmin Justin Kim's career started in 2013, when he performed a leading role in
Francesco Cavalli's opera
Elena at the
Aix-en-Provence Festival conducted by
Leonardo García Alarcón. The production also went on tour through several French and European cities, where Kim auditioned for various opera companies and got engaged to sing the role of Sesto in
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's
La Clemenza di Tito at the Montpellier Opera House in the 2014/15 season. In
Aix-en-Provence, he also got to know
Marc Minkowski and
Ivan Alexander with whom he sang Prince Orlofsky in a new production of
Die Fledermaus at the
Opéra Comique of
Paris in the same season. Another important engagement in 2014/15 was his debut at the
Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris as Oreste in
La Belle Hélène which was telecast by Arte. He was a member of the opera company in
Heidelberg in the 2015/16 season, where his roles included Cherubino in
Le Nozze di Figaro and the title role in the world premiere of
Johannes Kalitzke's
Pym. In the 2016/17 season, Kangmin Justin Kim made his debuts at many prestigious international opera houses and festivals, singing Speranza in
Claudio Monteverdi's ''
L'Orfeo and Nerone in L'incoronazione di Poppea with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner as part of a tour with performances at the Teatro La Fenice, the Salzburg Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Lucerne Festival, Berliner Philharmonie and Philharmonie de Paris. About his Nerone at the New York Alice Tully Hall, The New York Times'' wrote that Kim "made a headstrong Nero, with his wildly punkish blond hair and a wiry physique always coiled and ready to pounce" and that "his intensity was terrifying". He made his debuts at the
Glyndebourne Festival as Nireno in Handel's
Giulio Cesare in Egitto and at the
Staatsoper Unter den Linden in
Berlin as Nerone in ''
L'incoronazione di Poppea'' in 2018. In 2019, he made history as the first countertenor singing Cherubino in
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's
Le Nozze di Figaro at the
Royal Opera House Covent Garden conducted by Sir
John Eliot Gardiner, also making his house debut. Cherubino was one of three trouser roles by Mozart that Kim performed that year, together with Idamante in
Idomeneo in Wiesbaden and Annio in
La Clemenza di Tito at the
Theater an der Wien in
Vienna. In 2020, is scheduled to sing Ruggero in
Alcina in Dijon and Nancy conducted by
Leonardo Garcia Alarcon, Orlofsky in
Cologne and the title role of
M. Butterfly, a new opera by
Huang Ruo and
David Henry Hwang at the
Santa Fe Opera. ==Kimchilia Bartoli==