Ju Hyeon Han, a young singing student at Stony Brook University (SBU) in New York, has made opera history. As reported by Slipped Disc, Han, who lost her sight when she was a baby, played the role of Female Chorus in two performances of Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia last month. According to SBU, the South Korea-born soprano is the first blind singer to be cast in a leading role in an American conservatory or university opera production.

^{Ju Hyeon Han performing as Female Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia. Photograph © Stony Brook Opera}

Han is currently in her fourth year of a Doctor of Musical Arts in Vocal Performance degree at SBU. The Rape of Lucretia marked her first performance in a fully staged opera. Before taking on the major role for Stony Brook Opera the singer – who has a two-and-a-half-octave range and also plays piano, flute and violin – performed with the Baroque Ensemble, the Stony Brook University Orchestra and the Stony Brook Chorale.

“Ever since I can remember, I’ve had a burning desire to sing and make music my life,”...