Soprano / >emerging artist<
South Korean soprano Irina Park joined the ensemble at Theater Freiburg in the autumn 2018 after two seasons in the opera studio. In Freiburg she has performed Mimi/ La Bohème, Alice Ford/ Falstaff, Contessa/ Le nozze di Figaro, Antonia/ Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Fox/ The cunning little Vixen, Dido/ Dido and Aeneas, Noémie/ Cendrillon (DVD-recording for Naxos), Swanhilde in Franck’s Hulda (CD-recording for Naxos), Lieschen in Korngold’s Der Ring des Polykrates, Glasha/ Katya Kabanova, Alice in A. Schreier’s Wunderland, Safiye/ Rabia von Basra in L. Vollmers’ opera Crusades (world premiere). This season she has made role debuts as Madama Butterfly in Freiburg and as Pamina/ Die Zauberflöte at the Gwangju Culture & Art Center in South Korea.
Irina Park is a passionate concert singer and has performed soprano solos in Bach’s Matthäus-Passion, Himmelfahrtsoratorium, Osteroratorium, Weihnachtsoratorium, Mozart’s Great Mass in c minor, Mendelssohn’s Paulus, Psalm 24, Bruckner’s Te Deum, Saint-Saens’ Oratorio de Noel, Janacek’s Tagebuch eines Verschollenen. Her love for art song brought her 3rd prize at the International Art Song “Liedkunst” Competition Stuttgart 2018 of the Hugo-Wolf-Akademie and the Art Song Prize at the Gwangju Singing Competition 2017. She won 3rd prize at the Lions Competition 2016 in the Immling Festival, reached the finals at the DEBUT Competition 2016 and was awarded the Bärenreiter-Urtext-Preis at the ARD Competition 2015.
Irina Park obtained her Bachelor’s degree from the Ewha Women’s University in Seoul. She continued her Master studies in Germany, first at Universität der Künste Berlin with Prof. Peter Maus, then at Hochschule für Musik Freiburg with Prof. Angela Nick and currently with Prof. Mitsuko Shirai and Prof. Hartmut Höll in Karlsruhe. Her first opera roles in student productions were Susanna/ Le nozze di Figaro in Seoul, Contessa in Sarti’s Fra I due litiganti il terzo gode and the title role in Reimann’s Melusine in Berlin.