Mezzo-soprano Kim Chung-ja, star of European opera and Africa's 'Lusekelo,' dies at 82

Kim Chung-ja, a mezzo-soprano who graced Europe's premier opera stages and spent her later years caring for orphaned children in rural Africa — where she was known as "Lusekelo," meaning "the woman who brings happiness" — died Monday after a battle with cancer. She was 82.

Born in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province, in 1944, Kim first encountered music as a middle school student when a music teacher encouraged her and a Catholic priest arranged access to a church piano. In 1963, the year after she graduated from Jinmyeong Girls' High School in Seoul, an Irish priest helped her board a plane to Germany.

Her life was both a pioneering chapter in Korean vocal music history and a spiritual journey of artistic self-giving. Working as a nursing aide to put herself through school in a country where she knew no one, she never let go of her ambition to sing. She studied piano and voice at the Leopold Mozart Conservatory in Augsburg, Germany, before earning her degree from the prestigious Vienna University of Music in Austria.

The results were remarkable. In 1970, she became the first Korean vocalist to debut on a regular European opera stage, signing an exclusive contract with the Bern Opera in Switzerland. She went on to take leading roles with the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, captivating audiences across Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Spain.

After returning to South Korea in the 1970s, she taught at Chung-Ang University and Yonsei University before joining the Korea National University of Arts as a professor of vocal music, a post she held from 1994 to 2010, nurturing generations of singers. Around the time of her retirement, her path took a different turn. A 2009 visit to Karonga in northern Malawi, where she encountered the Lusubilo community — "hope" in the Tumbuka language — sheltering thousands of orphans, proved to be the defining turning point of her life. "This was the place I had been searching for my whole life," she later recalled.

Shortly after retiring in 2010, she sold her country home and traveled to Malawi with 200 million won ($147,000) of her own money. She taught the children to sing using keyboards and drums she had brought from South Korea, nurturing young spirits on bare earthen floors. The local community called her their "music director," and a tribal chief bestowed on her the African name Lusekelo — "the woman who brings happiness." Drawing on donations from supporters in South Korea, she also oversaw the digging of 42 wells in villages struggling without clean water. Diagnosed with stage-two breast cancer in October 2022, she returned to South Korea for treatment, but her heart never left Malawi.

She is survived by her son, Daniel Glatzel, who leads the Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra in Germany. The funeral home is located at Room 21 of Seoul St. Mary's Hospital. A funeral Mass will be held Thursday at Gaepo-dong Cathedral in Seoul.