Performance Year: 2026
Widely acclaimed for her portrayal of Cio-Cio-San in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, soprano Karen Chia-Ling Ho sang the signature role last season with the Florentine Opera Company, Parnassus Society, and Vancouver Opera. Other recent engagements include Meretaten in Akhnaten and the Crowned Child in Macbeth at the Metropolitan Opera and the title role of Tosca at Hong Kong’s More Than Music Festival. Ms. Ho made her San Francisco Opera debut as Princess Jia in the 2016 world premiere of Bright Sheng and David Henry Hwang’s Dream of the Red Chamber, a role she reprised in the Company’s 2022 revival and at the Hong Kong Arts Festival and the opera’s three-city tour of China in 2017. In the 2024/25 season, she was named winner of San Francisco Opera’s Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Emerging Stars Competition.
Other engagements include performances with Hawaii Opera Theater in Madama Butterfly and the New Jersey Festival Orchestra in the Yellow River Cantata, Strauss’ Op. 27, and operatic selections by Verdi. Ms. Ho was presented in concert with the American Composers Orchestra in Washington, D.C. by Chinese composer Li Shaosheng and appeared in concerts with both the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra in China. She has also performed as a soloist with the Musical Olympus Foundation, San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, and Philharmonia Orchestra of New York, noteably as Violetta in La Traviata at the Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater. She made her Carnegie Hall debut with the American Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leon Botstein as Maria in Ernst Krenek’s Der Diktator.
Ms. Ho, a participant of the 2014 Merola Opera Program, is a winner of the Renée Fleming Award from the Eastman School of Music. Additionally, she was a finalist in the Belvedere Competition and the Francisco Viñas Competition in Barcelona, received First Prize in the Mildred Miller International Voice Competition, Second Prize in the Marcello Giordani Foundation International Vocal Competition, and was awarded a Sergio Franchi Music Foundation Grant. Ms. Ho was also a district winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. She holds music degrees from the Universities of TNUA and Tung-Hai in Vocal Performance, a Master of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music, and an Artist Diploma from the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati.
