Korean conductor Eun Sun Kim is the Caroline H. Hume Music Director of San Francisco Opera, a position she has held since 2021. The 2025-26 Season underscores Kim’s success as a symphonic conductor with a number of prestigious debuts, including with the Dresden Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra. At San Francisco Opera this fall, she continues her long-term exploration of Verdi with a production of Simone Boccanegra, followed by Massenet’s Manon. She returns to the Berlin State Opera for Ariadne auf Naxos, and also returns for concerts with the Minnesota Orchestra, Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid.

Some of Kim’s notable orchestral engagements to date include the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de France, Philharmonia Orchestra, Barcelona Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, and major North American orchestras such as the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Her collaboration with the National Brass Ensemble—featuring a new arrangement of Wagner’s Ring cycle—was released by Pentatone on the album Deified.

Kim appears regularly at many of the world’s leading opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Bavarian State Opera, Semperoper Dresden, the Berlin State Opera, the Opéra national de Paris, and Teatro alla Scala in Milan. On the heels of Kim’s Met debut, noted for an “assured technical command, subtlety and imagination,” The New York Times recognized her as Classical Music’s Breakout Star.