Popera tenor Lim Hyung-joo will lead a two-day K-Popera Festival at Yongsan Art Hall in Seoul on November 13 and 14, an event he hopes will open what he calls a K-poper era for Korean crossover music. The festival, titled “K-Popera Festival in Yongsan with Lim Hyung-joo,” is organized by the Yongsan Cultural Foundation, which Lim chairs, to mark the reopening of Yongsan Art Hall after renovations.
Lim will serve as artistic director general of the festival, while Kim Hyun-su of Forte di Quattro, the winning team from the first season of JTBC’s “Phantom Singer,” will serve as artistic director in charge of the repertoire and program. The foundation announced the festival on October 21, describing it as the first time in Korea that a two-day event has been held under the name “Popera Festival.” Lim will receive no compensation for his director-general duties and no performance fee, according to the foundation.
The opening day, November 13, begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Garam Small Theater with a popera class led by John Noh, a professor at Kangnam University. Before that lecture, Lim will hold a master class with emerging tenor Lee Jeonghyeon, a Hanyang University alumnus, and the established Korean popera group Poete will give a congratulatory performance. The main event follows on November 14 at 6 p.m. in the Mir Grand Theater: the K-Popera Gala Concert, featuring eight performers from the first four seasons of “Phantom Singer.”
The gala lineup brings together Kim Hyun-su and Lee Byeori of Forte di Quattro, Paek Intae of Duetto, Kwak Donghyeon of Popular Phenomenon, Ahn Sekwon of Edel Reinklang, and Seo Youngtaek, Koo Bonsu, and Choi Yongho of Fortena. Tickets are nearly sold out, with only a small quantity remaining, the foundation said. Lim will perform without a fee, singing his signature songs “A Thousand Winds” and “Ave Maria,” before joining all of the performers for a finale of Sumi Jo’s “Champions.”
At a press briefing in Seoul on October 28, Lim set out his ambition in plain terms. “I want to open a K-poper era,” he said. “I hope the day will come when our younger popera singers win at the Grammy Awards in the United States and conquer the Billboard crossover chart.”
The festival’s name reflects a claim Lim has made for years about the genre’s roots. When he released his first album in 1998, he said, popera or crossover was still dismissed as “semi-classical,” and he had to introduce both himself and the genre at the same time. Many people trace popera’s rise to Andrea Bocelli or Sarah Brightman, he said, but the word itself was first used in a 1985 review in the British newspaper Daily Express of Kimera, whose real name is Kim Hong-hee. On that reading, Lim argued, Korea is in effect the genre’s country of origin, and in an era when the letter K adds a premium, putting K in front of popera felt natural.
That history also explains why the festival program reaches beyond popera alone. Alongside the headline repertoire, the performers will present Korean art songs, including “That Word,” a setting of a poem by Na Tae-ju, as well as popera arrangements of rock and trot.
Lim’s own career gives the festival its frame. He debuted with a solo album in 1998 and became known as a popera pioneer through songs including “A Thousand Winds,” “I Hope You Are Happy,” and “Hawolga.” In 2003 he became the youngest singer to perform the national anthem solo at the inauguration of the late President Roh Moo-hyun, and he has since performed at Carnegie Hall in New York, at an event hosted by Emperor Naruhito of Japan, and at the opening ceremony of the PyeongChang Winter Paralympics. He is also a voting member of the Grammy Awards. Last year he became the first chairman of the Yongsan Cultural Foundation, a post that marked his move into arts administration.
Lim described the festival as a turning point in that second act. He plans to mark his 30th debut anniversary in 2028 by shifting fully toward arts administration, with a world tour next year as his final period of full-scale activity before he stops releasing solo albums and limits recitals to about one charity performance a year. The foundation has its own longer goal for the venue: Yongsan Cultural Foundation representative Lim Sang-woo said the aim is to develop Yongsan Art Hall into a theater with its own repertoire, and the K-Popera Festival is the first attempt in that direction.
A further date follows the festival itself. On November 20, the foundation will present the Mantova Chamber Orchestra of Italy in concert with Lim at the Mir Grand Theater.
