Samling Artist soprano Haegee Lee was born in South Korea and trained at Seoul National University and the Conservatoire National de Région Pierre Barbizet, Marseille. She now studies with Isabelle Vernet. She was a Jette Parker Young Artist at the Royal Opera House and returns there this season to sing Papagena in Die Zauberflöte. Next season she makes her debut at English National Opera as Queen Tye Akhnaten and sings Musetta La bohème for Welsh National Opera.
My earliest musical memory is …
Playing a very easy piano version of ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’ next to my Mum when I was three years old, and my first stage experience was when I was seven, singing a Christmas cantata in the Korean church.
The last piece of music I listened to was…
My favourite music is jazz. Nowadays I’m falling in love with Enzo Orefice Trio.
My three travel essentials are…
Noise-cancelling headphones, coffee and thriller books.
The place in South Korea that everyone should visit is…
Gyeongbokgung. This is a very lovely old palace in downtown Seoul. It was built over 600 years ago, but most halls and pavilions were destroyed during the Japanese colonial rule in the 19th century because the old palaces were symbolic places representing Korea as an independent nation. This lovely palace was finally restored to its original state in the 1990s. This place is really historical and if you love K- Drama on Netflix, it’s the setting for ‘Kingdom’.
When I have a day off, I like to …
Go to galleries and museums in London. My favourite places are the Courtauld Gallery, Tate Modern and White Cube. When I moved to London in 2017 my friend told me that most of the galleries and museums are free of charge so I am trying to visit them all! And I love to try to memorize opera scores while I walk-in the gallery.
My dream role would be…
Lucia from ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’. But my first dream when I was 13 was to sing Carmen, because I saw the New York Metropolitan Opera ‘Carmen’ with my Mum and that was why I started to study opera. But years later, my professor explained that I’m a very high soprano, so I couldn’t sing Carmen and that first dream role was gone with my crying. But my next dream was Gilda, because my professor bought me a score of ‘Rigoletto’ when I started high school. I studied this role a lot and finally performed it in 2019 at Welsh National Opera with Alexander Joel just after I graduated from JPYAP. It was such a fabulous experience to sing a role I had dreamed of so much.
If I weren’t a singer, I would be …
An archaeologist. I love history and culture and adventure.
The best memory of my Samling Artist Programme week was …
Every single moment with the leaders Joan Rodgers, Malcolm Martineau and James Garnon. They taught me some important skills but also they taught me the reality of music and how I can make my songs more alive and clear and sound more beautiful. So I was thinking lots of things about music and what I am singing about.
