Hitting the high notes.

Operatic countertenor Brian Asawa shares some intriguing characteristics with his peers

In the world of opera, countertenors are a strange breed. They're men who sing in a high vocal range usually associated with women. And they confront great obstacles competing in an arena that prefers its men to be howling heroic tenors, barrel-chested baritones, or burly basses.

You're likely to find countertenors singing in such Baroque works as Handel's Julius Caesar or Xerxes. In many instances they assume roles that for more than a century were usurped by crossdressing female sopranos and mezzo-sopranos.

The appetite for these peculiar male voices is pitched so high now, countertenors are fast becoming stars in their own right. Brian Asawa is the latest and the brightest. "I don't like to think of the countertenor voice as something weird," says the 31-year-old Asawa. "People should think of the countertenor voice as something as natural as any other male voice, just in a higher register."

Asawa certainly makes it seem natural. He's the first countertenor ever to have won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions, which he did in 1991, and was named a grand prize winner in Placido Domingo's International Operalia `94 Opera Competition--certainly two groundbreaking events in the history of this heretofore ghettoized vocal category. His 1997 debut CD of baroque songs, The Dark Is My Delight (BMG), is a delicious showcase. And composer Ned Rorem has written the song cycle More Than a Day for him.

The San Francisco-based Asawa grew up in Los Angeles, singing in the choir of his Japanese Methodist church. Musically inclined, he played such instruments as the cello, trombone, and piano. But it wasn't until the end of his first year at the University of California, Santa Cruz, that he accidentally stumbled upon his greatest treasure. "I discovered that I had a strong falsetto voice by imitating female sopranos in the choirs I was singing with in college," he confesses. more, he discovered his register at about the same time he came out. It was an amazing confluence of gay self-realization and artistic self-acceptance, which he simply refers to as a "freeing experience."

Asawa's case is not isolated. He belongs to a unique profession significantly populated by gay men, at least in the United major gay players are David Daniels and Drew Minter. Coincidence? No, says Asawa. "Heterosexual men don't feel comfortable singing in a treble register because it's not butch," he explains. "Gay men feel quite comfortable singing in their falsetto voices."

To some ears the high-pitched range of these male vocalists may sound strange, but to others it is precisely this ambiguity that is the main draw. "Listeners get a thrill out of that," reflects Asawa. "It confronts them seductively with the mystery of the masculine-feminine continuum."