Brian Asawa
Encyclopedia
Brian Asawa is a Japanese-American countertenor
.
He began his studies as a piano major at the University of California, Santa Cruz
, ultimately switching his studies to singing under tenor Harlan Hokin. After two semesters there he transferred to UCLA where he studied under Virginia Fox and Kari Windingstad. In 1989 he began a masters degree in early-music interpretation at the University of Southern California
in Los Angeles where he was a pupil of the British lutanist James Tyler. However, Asawa never finished this program as his performance career began to take off.
The singer's career was launched in 1991 when he became the first countertenor to win both the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions
and an Adler Fellowship to the San Francisco Opera
's Merola Opera Program
. He made his professional opera debut at the San Francisco Opera in 1991 in Hans Werner Henze
's Das verratene Meer
where he also sang the Shepherd in Tosca
and Oberon in Benjamin Britten
's A Midsummer Night's Dream
in 1992. While at the SFO he continued further voice studies with Jane Randolph. He also made his first opera appearance in New York City in 1992 at the Mozart
Bicentennial
celebration at Lincoln Center, singing the title role in Mozart's Ascanio in Alba
with the Mostly Mozart Festival Chorus and the New York Chamber Symphony
under conductor Ádám Fischer
.
In 1993 Asawa was awarded a career grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation
and that same year made his debut at the Santa Fe Opera
as Arsamene in George Frideric Handel
's Xerxes
. In 1994 he became the first countertenor to win the Plácido Domingo
Operalia International Opera Competition, and made debuts at the Metropolitan Opera
as the Voice of Apollo in Benjamin Britten
's Death in Venice
and Glimmerglass Opera
as Ottone in Claudio Monteverdi
's L'incoronazione di Poppea
. He was chosen Seattle Opera
's Artist of the Year for the 1996–97 season.
Asawa's other career highlights include Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus
at San Francisco Opera and San Diego Opera; Tolomeo in Giulio Cesare
at Metropolitan Opera, Bordeaux, Opera Australia, Royal Opera House
, Covent Garden
, Paris Opera, Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, and Hamburg State Opera
; Arsamene in Serse
at Los Angeles, Cologne, Seattle, and Geneva; Admeto in Admeto
at Sydney, Montpellier and Halle
; Baba The Turk in The Rake's Progress
at San Francisco and for Swedish television; Fyodor in Boris Godunov
at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Endimione in La Calisto in Brussels, Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream
at San Francisco, Houston, London Symphony Orchestra and Lyon; Ascanio in Ascanio in Alba
at the Lincoln Center; Farnace in Mitridate, re di Ponto
at Opera National de Lyon and Paris Opera; Nero in L'incoronazione di Poppea
in Sydney; Orfeo in Orfeo ed Euridice
, La Speranza in L'Orfeo and L'Umana Fragilita/Anfinomo in Il ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria
at Netherlands Opera; David in Saul
and Belize in Angels at the Bavarian State Opera
, and Sesto in Giulio Cesare at COC in Toronto.
Brian Asawa's discography includes four solo recital discs ranging from Dowland and Edmund Campion
to Rachmaninoff
and Ned Rorem
. Opera recordings include Farnace in Mitridate for Decca, Arsamene in Serse for Conifer and Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream for Philips with the London Symphony Orchestra
under Sir Colin Davis
.
Asawa is the nephew of sculptor Ruth Asawa
.
Countertenor
A countertenor is a male singing voice whose vocal range is equivalent to that of a contralto, mezzo-soprano, or a soprano, usually through use of falsetto, or far more rarely than normal, modal voice. A pre-pubescent male who has this ability is called a treble...
.
He began his studies as a piano major at the University of California, Santa Cruz
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...
, ultimately switching his studies to singing under tenor Harlan Hokin. After two semesters there he transferred to UCLA where he studied under Virginia Fox and Kari Windingstad. In 1989 he began a masters degree in early-music interpretation at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
in Los Angeles where he was a pupil of the British lutanist James Tyler. However, Asawa never finished this program as his performance career began to take off.
The singer's career was launched in 1991 when he became the first countertenor to win both the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions
Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions
The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions is an annual singing competition sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera. Established in 1954, its purpose is to discover, assist, promote, and develop young opera singers. The competition is held in four stages: Districts, Regional, Semi-Final, and...
and an Adler Fellowship to the San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola and is the second largest opera company in North America...
's Merola Opera Program
Merola opera program
Merola Opera Program is a San Francisco training program for opera singers, coaches, and stage directors.- Merola Opera Program :Merola Opera Program is the San Francisco Opera's training and performance program for promising young artists...
. He made his professional opera debut at the San Francisco Opera in 1991 in Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life"...
's Das verratene Meer
Das verratene Meer
Das verratene Meer is an opera in two parts and 14 scenes, with music by Hans Werner Henze to a German libretto by Hans-Ulrich Treichel, after Yukio Mishima's novel The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea...
where he also sang the Shepherd in Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...
and Oberon in Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
's A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream (opera)
A Midsummer Night's Dream is an opera with music by Benjamin Britten and set to a libretto adapted by the composer and Peter Pears from William Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream...
in 1992. While at the SFO he continued further voice studies with Jane Randolph. He also made his first opera appearance in New York City in 1992 at the Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
Bicentennial
Anniversary
An anniversary is a day that commemorates or celebrates a past event that occurred on the same day of the year as the initial event. For example, the first event is the initial occurrence or, if planned, the inaugural of the event. One year later would be the first anniversary of that event...
celebration at Lincoln Center, singing the title role in Mozart's Ascanio in Alba
Ascanio in Alba
Ascanio in Alba, K. 111, is a pastoral opera in two parts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Parini...
with the Mostly Mozart Festival Chorus and the New York Chamber Symphony
New York Chamber Symphony
The New York Chamber Symphony was an American chamber orchestra based in New York City. It was active from 1977 to 2002.It was founded in 1977 by its founding music director Gerard Schwarz, and Omus Hirshbein. Its original name was the Y Chamber Symphony, and it was the resident ensemble at the...
under conductor Ádám Fischer
Ádám Fischer
Ádám Fischer is a Hungarian conductor of Jewish family origin. He is the general music director of the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, with which he has recorded the complete Haydn symphonies for the Nimbus label, the first digital recording of the cycle...
.
In 1993 Asawa was awarded a career grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation
Richard Tucker Music Foundation
The Richard Tucker Music Foundation, founded in 1975, is a "non-profit cultural organization dedicated to perpetuating the artistic legacy of the great American tenor through the support and advancement of the careers of talented American opera singers by bringing opera into the community...
and that same year made his debut at the Santa Fe Opera
Santa Fe Opera
The Santa Fe Opera is an American opera company, located north of Santa Fe in the U.S. state of New Mexico, headquartered on a former guest ranch of .-General history:...
as Arsamene in George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
's Xerxes
Serse
Serse is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. It was first performed in London on 15 April 1738. The Italian libretto was adapted by an unknown hand from that by Silvio Stampiglia for an earlier opera of the same name by Giovanni Bononcini in 1694...
. In 1994 he became the first countertenor to win the Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo KBE , born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range...
Operalia International Opera Competition, and made debuts at the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
as the Voice of Apollo in Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
's Death in Venice
Death in Venice (opera)
Death in Venice is an opera in two acts by Benjamin Britten, his last. The opera is based on the novella Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. Myfanwy Piper wrote the English libretto. It was first performed at Snape Maltings near Aldeburgh, England on 16 June 1973.The astringent score is marked by some...
and Glimmerglass Opera
Glimmerglass Opera
Glimmerglass Festival is an opera company which was founded in 1975 by Peter Macris and presents an annual season of operas at the Alice Busch Opera Theater on Otsego Lake eight miles north of Cooperstown, New York, United States.The summer-only season usually consists of four operas performed in...
as Ottone in Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...
's L'incoronazione di Poppea
L'incoronazione di Poppea
L'incoronazione di Poppea is an Italian baroque opera comprising a prologue and three acts, first performed in Venice during the 1642–43 carnival season. The music, attributed to Claudio Monteverdi, is a setting of a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello...
. He was chosen Seattle Opera
Seattle Opera
The Seattle Opera is an opera company located in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1963 by Glynn Ross, who served as the company's first general director through 1983, Seattle Opera's season runs from August to late May, with five or six operas offered and with eight to ten performances each, often...
's Artist of the Year for the 1996–97 season.
Asawa's other career highlights include Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...
at San Francisco Opera and San Diego Opera; Tolomeo in Giulio Cesare
Giulio Cesare
Giulio Cesare in Egitto , commonly known simply as Giulio Cesare, is an Italian opera in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music by George Frideric Handel in 1724...
at Metropolitan Opera, Bordeaux, Opera Australia, Royal Opera House
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
, Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
, Paris Opera, Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, and Hamburg State Opera
Hamburg State Opera
The Hamburg State Opera is one of the leading opera companies in Germany.Opera in Hamburg dates back to 2 January 1678 when the "Opern-Theatrum" was inaugurated with a performance of a biblical Singspiel by Johann Theile...
; Arsamene in Serse
Serse
Serse is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. It was first performed in London on 15 April 1738. The Italian libretto was adapted by an unknown hand from that by Silvio Stampiglia for an earlier opera of the same name by Giovanni Bononcini in 1694...
at Los Angeles, Cologne, Seattle, and Geneva; Admeto in Admeto
Admeto
Admeto, re di Tessaglia is a three-act opera written for the Royal Academy of Music with music composed by George Frideric Handel to an Italian-language libretto prepared by Nicola Haym. The story is partly based on Euripedes' Alcestis. The opera's first performance was at the Haymarket Theatre...
at Sydney, Montpellier and Halle
Halle Opera House
The Halle Opera House is an opera house in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt. Originally named the Halle Town Theatre , the theatre was built in 1886. A bomb attack on 31 March 1945 destroyed much of the original building. Restorative work ensued a few years later, and the theatre reopened in 1951 under the...
; Baba The Turk in The Rake's Progress
The Rake's Progress
The Rake's Progress is an opera in three acts and an epilogue by Igor Stravinsky. The libretto, written by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, is based loosely on the eight paintings and engravings A Rake's Progress of William Hogarth, which Stravinsky had seen on May 2, 1947, in a Chicago...
at San Francisco and for Swedish television; Fyodor in Boris Godunov
Boris Godunov (opera)
Boris Godunov is an opera by Modest Mussorgsky . The work was composed between 1868 and 1873 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is Mussorgsky's only completed opera and is considered his masterpiece. Its subjects are the Russian ruler Boris Godunov, who reigned as Tsar during the Time of Troubles,...
at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Endimione in La Calisto in Brussels, Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream (opera)
A Midsummer Night's Dream is an opera with music by Benjamin Britten and set to a libretto adapted by the composer and Peter Pears from William Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream...
at San Francisco, Houston, London Symphony Orchestra and Lyon; Ascanio in Ascanio in Alba
Ascanio in Alba
Ascanio in Alba, K. 111, is a pastoral opera in two parts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Parini...
at the Lincoln Center; Farnace in Mitridate, re di Ponto
Mitridate, re di Ponto
Mitridate, re di Ponto , K. 87 , is an early opera seria in three acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto is by Vittorio Amadeo Cigna-Santi after Giuseppe Parini's Italian translation of Jean Racine....
at Opera National de Lyon and Paris Opera; Nero in L'incoronazione di Poppea
L'incoronazione di Poppea
L'incoronazione di Poppea is an Italian baroque opera comprising a prologue and three acts, first performed in Venice during the 1642–43 carnival season. The music, attributed to Claudio Monteverdi, is a setting of a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello...
in Sydney; Orfeo in Orfeo ed Euridice
Orfeo ed Euridice
Orfeo ed Euridice is an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck based on the myth of Orpheus, set to a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi. It belongs to the genre of the azione teatrale, meaning an opera on a mythological subject with choruses and dancing...
, La Speranza in L'Orfeo and L'Umana Fragilita/Anfinomo in Il ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria is an opera in a prologue and five acts , set by Claudio Monteverdi to a libretto by Giacomo Badoaro. The opera was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1639–1640 carnival season...
at Netherlands Opera; David in Saul
Saul (Handel)
Saul is an oratorio in three acts written by George Frideric Handel with a libretto by Charles Jennens. Taken from the 1st Book of Samuel, the story of Saul focuses on the first king of Israel’s relationship with his eventual successor, David; one which turns from admiration to envy and hatred,...
and Belize in Angels at the Bavarian State Opera
Bavarian State Opera
The Bavarian State Opera is an opera company based in Munich, Germany.Its orchestra is the Bavarian State Orchestra.- History:The opera company which was founded under Princess Henriette Adelaide of Savoy has been in existence since 1653...
, and Sesto in Giulio Cesare at COC in Toronto.
Brian Asawa's discography includes four solo recital discs ranging from Dowland and Edmund Campion
Edmund Campion
Saint Edmund Campion, S.J. was an English Roman Catholic martyr and Jesuit priest. While conducting an underground ministry in officially Protestant England, Campion was arrested by priest hunters. Convicted of high treason by a kangaroo court, he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn...
to Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
and Ned Rorem
Ned Rorem
Ned Rorem is a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer and diarist. He is best known and most praised for his song settings.-Life:...
. Opera recordings include Farnace in Mitridate for Decca, Arsamene in Serse for Conifer and Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream for Philips with the London Symphony Orchestra
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra is a major orchestra of the United Kingdom, as well as one of the best-known orchestras in the world. Since 1982, the LSO has been based in London's Barbican Centre.-History:...
under Sir Colin Davis
Colin Davis
Sir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE is an English conductor. His repertoire is broad, but among the composers with whom he is particularly associated are Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Tippett....
.
Asawa is the nephew of sculptor Ruth Asawa
Ruth Asawa
Ruth Asawa is a Japanese American sculptor. In San Francisco, she has been called the "fountain lady" for her works that include the mermaid fountain at Ghirardelli Square...
.