Conductor Eun Sun Kim has become something of a sensation in the world of European opera, where neither Asian conductors nor women are common, to say nothing of an artist who is both. In 2019, she became the music director of the San Francisco Opera in the U.S.

Kim (in the Korean naming system, her full name is Kim Eun Sun) was born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1980 and studied composition and conducting at Seoul's Yonsei University. Her breakthrough as a conductor came in 2008 when she won a European contest, the Jesús López Cobos Opera Conducting Competition, in Spain. The win brought with it a chance to work under López Cobos himself at the Teatro Real in Madrid, where she also encountered conductors Jirí Belohlávek and Ivor Bolton. Kim made her debut in Madrid at the Auditorio Nacional in the spring of 2010, leading a performance of Rossini's Il Viaggio a Reims. During the following season, she appeared in Austria at the Graz Opera and was invited back for a concert shortly afterward. In 2012, she made her debut at the Frankfurt Opera with La bohème. The next few years brought appearances at major German houses, including, in the 2015-2016 season, the Berlin Staatsoper with Verdi's Un ballo in maschera, the Semperoper Dresden with La bohème, and the Frankfurt Opera, once again, with Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer and Franz Lehár's Der Graf von Luxemburg.

Kim married the influential concert promoter Michael Lewin, who she freely conceded helped her career along in its early stages. Kim told Korea's Chosun Ilbo, "now it's an obstacle because I need to fight against that prejudice and prove that I was able to come this far on my own merit. It may work once or twice, but it's impossible to survive in leading European opera houses without solid ability as a conductor." A bigger problem was resistance to her interpretive decisions from mostly older, mostly male members of European opera orchestras. Kim took the chance to prove the doubters wrong all along with her debut album, an issue of her acclaimed and sparking Frankfurt performance of Der Graf von Luxemburg, released on the prestigious Oehms label.

The late 2010s saw Kim make major breakthroughs in the U.S. Her debut appearance in that country came in September 2017, at a much-heralded Houston Grand Opera production of Verdi's La traviata that helped mark the city's return to musical normalcy in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. The company then named Kim principal guest conductor, effective with the 2019-2020 season. She was the first woman to hold the post, and in May 2018, she also became the first woman to conduct the opening concert of Cincinnati's venerable May Festival. Bigger still, after a guest appearance in June conducting Dvorák's Rusalka, Kim was named music director of the San Francisco Opera. It was her first full music director post, and she was the first woman to hold that position as well. ~ James Manheim, Rovi